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Columbia Wini\itt0itv 

STUDIES IN ENGLISH AND COMPARATIVE 

LITERATURE 



VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 



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VERGIL 

AND 

THE ENGLISH POETS 



BY 

ELIZABETH NITCHIE, Ph. D. 

Instructor in English in Goucher Collegb 




^^^'^^^ 



COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 
1919 

All rights reserved 



< 



Copyright, 1919 
By Columbia University Press 



Printed from type, April, 1919 



^ k7 i9!9 



©CI.A515690 



-v- .', ( 



This Monograph has been approved by the Department of 
English and Comparative Literature in Columbia University 
as a contribution to knowledge worthy of publication. 

A. H. THORNDIKE, 

Executive Officer 



PREFACE 

This book has grown out of a long-standing interest in 
the classics and a feeling that the connection between the 
Uterature of Greece and Rome and that of England is too 
seldom realized and too seldom stressed by the lovers and 
teachers of both. As Sir Gilbert Murray has said in his 
recent presidential address to the Classical Association of 
England, The Religion of a Man of Letters, ^^ Paradise Lost 
and Prometheus Unbound are . . . the children of Vergil 
and Homer, of Aeschylus and Plato. . . . Let us admit 
that there must of necessity be in all English literature a 
strain of what one may call vernacular English thought. 
... It remains true that from the Renaissance onward, nay, 
from Chaucer and even from Alfred, the higher and more 
massive workings of our literature owe more to the Greeks 
and Romans than to our own un -Romanized ancestors." 

Vergil has probably exerted more influence upon the 
literature of England throughout its whole course and in 
all its branches than any other Roman poet. At certain 
periods Horace has taken precedence over him, and at 
other periods, Ovid; but it is doubtful whether the influ- 
ence of either has been as far-reaching or as varied as that 
of Vergil. A discussion of his influence upon the English 
poets, therefore, will serve as an illustration of that continuity 
of literature, that tradiiio, of which Sir Gilbert Murray speaks. 

I wish to thank those members of the English Depart- 
ment of Columbia University who, by their advice and aid, 
have made this book possible. I wish to express my appre- 
ciation especially of the unfailing kindness of Professor A. H. 

vii 



Viu PREFACE 

Thorndike, who has read the book in manuscript and proof, 
and has given me much valuable help. Professor William 
Peterfield Trent also has read it in manuscript and has 
given me constant assistance. Many helpful suggestions 
and criticisms, especially on the earher portions, have come 
from Professor H. M. Ayres. To Professor Nelson Glenn 
McCrea of the Department of Classical Philology is due 
the initial suggestion of the subject. He has never failed, 
while I have been working on the book, to give me encour- 
agement and advice, and his interpretation of the work of 
Vergil has been a constant source of inspiration. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. I^rTRODUCTION 1 

II. The Mediaeval Tradition 13 

III. Chaucer, His Contemporaries and his Imitators . 39 

IV. Vergil and Humanism 66 

V. Spenser and the English Renaissance 92 

VI. Milton and the Classical Epic 124 

VII. Dryden and Pope 148 

VIII. Thomson and the Didactic Poets 179 

IX. Landor and the Romanticists 197 

X. Tennyson and the Victorians 212 

Bibliography 235 

I. Books of Reference 235 

II. List of Translations, Burlesques, Parodies, and 

Imitations 236 

Index 245 



VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH 

POETS 

CHAPTER I 
INTRODUCTION 

From the days when Valerius Flaccus and Silius Italicus 
wrote epics in imitation of the Aeneid, and Columella com- 
posed a verse treatise on horticulture after the manner of 
the Georgics, and Calpurnius Siculus copied the VergiUan 
style and subject-matter in his Eclogues, the influence of 
Vergil upon the literature of the world has been a constant 
force. Even in this practical, scientific twentieth century, 
a newspaper editor refers to his Eclogues in the heat of a 
political campaign, the echo of a half-forgotten passage 
learned in school-days comes back to a soldier in the trenches, 
an epic poem on the Volsung story is modeled on the struc- 
ture of the Aeneid, and the poet-laureate of England pubUshes 
a cento of translations of a brief passage in the sixth book, 
with a version of his own. 

It was to the sheer force of his genius that Vergil owed his 
long popularity. Neither his personaUty nor his life would 
have had sufficient appeal or interest to push forward 
works that were not of the highest merit. Shy and modest 
to such a degree that he earned the punning nickname of 
the Maiden (Virgo), this retiring idealist gave on his death- 
bed the command that the Aeneid should be burnt. Nor 
did his career have the historical importance of a Caesar 
or the romantic interest of an Ovid. His was a singularly 

1 



2 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

uneventful life, as far as we know it. He was born in the 
little village of Andes near Mantua in the year 70 B.C. 
His father was a small freeholder, tilling his own fields and 
raising timber and bees. Here Vergil gained the knowl- 
edge which he afterwards turned so wonderfully to account 
in the Georgics. He had, however, the best education pos- 
sible, first at Cremona, then at Milan, and finally at Rome 
itself, where he studied rhetoric and philosophy. In the 
confiscation of land after the battle of Phihppi, Vergil, whose 
father had meanwhile died, lost his little estate, but through 
the friendship of Polho, Gallus, and Varus, he was given in 
compensation land in Campania, and was introduced to, 
Octavianus. About this time, Vergil published his Eclogues, 
which immediately made a stir in the literary world, as the 
beginning of a new type of poetry in Rome, and the promise 
of future greatness in the author himself. Outwardly they 
are imitations of the Idylls of Theocritus, and they are 
cast in the conventional forms of the dialogue between 
two shepherds, the song-contest in alternate verse with a 
lamb or a graven bowl as the stake, the complaint of the 
lover over the hardheartedness or the faithlessness of his 
mistress, and the lament for a comrade who has died. Into 
this pastoral form Vergil has woven some personal allegory, 
in reference to the loss of his estate, the death of Julius 
Caesar, and the misfortunes of his friend Gallus. The ten 
poems are marked by a certain artificiality which is a fre- 
quent characteristic of imitative and allegorical poetry, 
and the execution shows the hand of a beginner, but of a 
beginner of great things. For the promise of the charm of 
Vergil's later poems is here, especially in the golden light 
of the fourth Eclogue and the romantic atmosphere of the 
story of the deserted Gallus. 

With the publication of the Georgics in 29 B.C., Vergil took 
his place at the head of Latin literature. Their beauty has 



INTRODUCTION 3 

perhaps been obscured by the greater glory of the Aeneid. 
But Vergil never proved himself so surely a "lord of lan- 
guage" as he did in dealing with the unpromising subjects 
of " tilth and vineyard, hive and horse and herd," and to 
demonstrate it one has only to turn to him from the awk- 
ward dullness of The Fleece or The Chase. Lucretius put his 
philosophical teaching into poetry, for he said he must 
smear the lip of the cup with honey, that the bitter but 
beneficial dose within it might be made acceptable. So 
Vergil, commissioned by Augustus to revive in the hearts 
of the Romans a love for agriculture, put the precepts of 
husbandry into verse which he had time to bring as near 
perfection as possible. With a background of the beauty 
of Italy and the charm of the country, he laid the emphasis 
on the necessity of unending labor and on its sure ^reward 
in actual production and in the strengthening of character 
as wel as of body — a real Gospel of Work. 

The splendid digression in the second book of the Georgics 
on the glory of Italy, with its closing apostrophe to the 
"mighty mother of heroes," strikes the note of Vergil's 
last and greatest work. The Aeneid, begun shortly after the 
publication of the Georgics, occupied the poet's time until 
his death in 19 B.C., and yet he did not consider it finished. 
It embodied the best that was in him, his passionate love 
for his country, his veneration for his emperor, his broodings 
over the significance and purposes of human life. It inevi- 
tably challenged comparison with the great epics of Greece, 
and incurred the criticism of being a mere imitation. 
Imitative it indubitably is in mere externals; but the 
marvel is that from materials and framework originally 
Greek, Vergil has wrought a poem shot through and 
through with Roman feehng. Each suggestion from the 
Iliad or the Odyssey is reworked with the central pur- 
pose of impressing upon the Roman reader the grandeur 



4 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

of the Rome that had been and the opportunity to make 
the Rome of the future, built on the soKd foundation of her 
history, even more glorious. So the catalogue of the Itahan 
forces in the seventh book is bound to the story by the 
element of national pride in these ancestors of the later 
Roman famihes; the pictures on the shield of Aeneas 
are not of a general character like those on the shield of 
Achilles, but tell the story of the growth of the Roman 
people; the episode of Dido is not a mere copy of the ad- 
ventures of Ulysses in the land of the Phaeacians, but is 
connected vitally with the Punic Wars of later years; the 
visit to the Underworld gives an opportunity for the proph- 
ecy by Anchises to his son of the future glories of the 
Roman race. Many an episode, such as the landing at 
Actium and the celebration of the funeral games at Acesta, 
was designed to set the chords of patriotism vibrating, by 
reminding its readers of some event in Roman history. 
And to the men of the Augustan age, Roman history had 
culminated in the reign of Octavianus, and everything in 
the poem tends to a glorification of the Julian gens. The 
name of the boy lulus is a perpetual reminder that Aeneas, 
the representative of Rome, was the real founder of the 
family to which the great names of Caesar and Augustus, 
so highly lauded in the sixth book, had brought honor and 
renown. 

This national appeal is the real message of the Aeneid, 
and yet we who are not Romans can find in it something 
which still speaks to us after nineteen centuries. It is not 
only the plea for a higher patriotism. It is the expression 
of the tenderness of a great spirit, brooding over the cost 
of human life and the horrors of struggle and warfare, longing 
for the time of a perpetual pax Romana; the expression of 
his sense of the pathos of existence epitomized in the oft- 
quoted lacrimae rerum, and also of his assurance of the 



INTRODUCTION 5 

continual presence of a Deity who is a pervading and guiding 
force. This is the true VergiUan charm, which both attracts 
and puzzles one who is seeking a definition of it. 

But throughout the centuries it has been the story of the 
Aeneid that has appealed to readers and writers, rather than 
any philosophical aspect of the poem. The construction 
of the Aeneid is a thing to be reckoned with. Not only have 
the adventures of Aeneas and the tragic fortunes of Dido 
won the interest and sympathy of many a man and woman, 
but the structure of the poem has served as a model for 
epic poetry from that time to this. While Vergil cannot 
approach Ovid as a mere story-teller, the dramatic force of 
single episodes and the unity of the entire narrative are 
remarkable. While the story cannot begin and end in the 
same place as does that of the Odysseij, the thought of Italy 
is always before the Trojans, and Troy and Italy are in 
reahty no farther separated than are their names in the 
first two Hues of the poem: 

Arma virumque cano Troiae qui primus ab oris 
Italiam fato profugus Laviniaque venit 
litora. 

The story is a fairly simple one. Aeneas and his com- 
rades, fleeing from Troy, are still pursued by the hatred of 
Juno. They are shipwrecked in a storm which she has 
caused, and land on the shores of Africa. They are kindly 
received by Dido, queen of the new city of Carthage. At 
a feast given in their honor, Aeneas tells the queen the whole 
story of the last night of Troy, in a most dramatic narrative, 
which perhaps owes something to Euripides. He also 
relates his wanderings up to the time of his arrival at Car- 
thage. Meanwhile Venus has inspired Dido with a violent 
love for Aeneas, which he returns, but at the command of 
the gods and the summons of his higher destiny, he leaves 



6 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

her and proceeds upon his way to Italy, whereupon she 
dies by her own hand. No summary can give even a hint 
of the dramatic power of the second and fourth books, 
which tell of the fall of Troy and the death of Dido, and 
which have been the most read and best loved of all the 
twelve. Aeneas stops at Sicily and holds games in memory 
of his father, who had died there the year before. He then 
proceeds to Italy, and at the command of the gods, visits 
the Underworld, where he sees his father and learns from 
him the future glory of his people. Advancing to the 
vicinity of the future city of Rome, he makes a treaty with 
Latinus, king of the country, for the hand of his daughter, 
Lavinia. A feud breaks out, however, between the two 
nations, stirred up by the Fury Allecto at the command of 
Juno, and Turnus, Lavinia's former betrothed, joins the op- 
ponents of the Trojans. There follows a more or less 
uninteresting series of battles, with varying fortunes, en- 
livened by the episode of Nisus and Euryalus, two friends 
who make a night raid upon the enemy, and by the story of 
Camilla, the maiden warrior. The war is finally settled 
by a single combat between Turnus and Aeneas, in which 
the former is killed and the Trojan wins both bride and 
kingdom. 

Vergil's mastery of the hexameter has never been ques- 
tioned. It was a great achievement to bring the stubborn 
Latin language, with its essentially iambic rhythm, into 
subjection to a meter made up of dactyls and spondees. 
The work had been begun by Ennius and Lucretius, and 
was brought to its full perfection by Vergil, a perfection 
which has never since been equaled. And to many an 
English reader, especially in the eighteenth and nineteenth 
centuries, this perfection of the hexameter, added to Vergil's 
positive genius for finding the right words, has appealed as 
his greatest beauty. The liquid smoothness of the Eclogues, 



INTRODUCTION 7 

the finished charm of the Georgics, and the stately harmonies 
and rhythms of the Aeneid have kept for Vergil his place 
as the greatest of Latin poets, even when his story has 
temporarily lost its interest or his deeper thoughtfulness 
has not been understood. And when these other qualities 
have been uppermost in the minds of his critics, there has 
rarely, if ever, except in the uncritical periods of literature, 
been a failure to appreciate the fact that his marvelous 
power of expression is the chief factor in his preeminence 
as a story-teller and as a philosopher. _ 

The great variety of Vergil's poetic powers has given him 
an appeal to men engaged in all branches of literature. The 
dramatic qualities of the scenes in the second and fourth 
books of the Aeneid have made the fall of Troy and the 
death of Dido favorite subjects for dramatic representation; 
the oratorical power of his great speeches gave him a prestige 
in the schools of the Empire and of the Middle Ages, endeared 
him to men like Bossuet and Burke, and have made him an 
"orator's poet." The descriptive powers by which he is 
enabled to convey not only the appearance of a scene, but 
also the idea of horror, of weariness, of pathos, of awe and 
mystery which underlies the mere outward semblance of 
the death of Priam, of the despair of the Trojan women in 
Sicily, of the death of Pallas, or of the vision of awful faces 
on the night of Troy's downfall, have been the admiration 
and despair of many an imitator and translator. The 
music of the verse of the Eclogues, the perfect smoothness 
of the Georgics, made him the model for English poetry in 
its Augustan period; and the compactness of phrase and a 
the varied harmonies of the Aeneid have influenced masters ') 
of rhythm like Milton and Tennyson. 

But the subject of this book is not Vergil as he was, or 
even as modern critics and scholars think he was, but Vergil 



8 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

as he appeared to and influenced the makers of Enghsh 
hterature throughout its history. Its aim is to trace the 
changes in the reaction to his poetry in the different periods 
of EngUsh hterature, and to study his influence especially 
on the representative poets of England under the varying 
conditions of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, Pseudo- 
classicism, and Romanticism, The prose, which naturally 
shows less influence than the poetry, has been treated only 
incidentally, all the body of pseudo-classic criticism, for 
instance, being considered very briefly, simply in order to 
form a background for pseudo-classic poetry. 

The Middle Ages, with innate respect for "authority," 
regarded Vergil with all reverence not only as a great poet, 
but also as a writer of a volume that might be used as a 
text-book for grammar and rhetoric. While the ecclesiastics 
attacked him on the ground of pernicious doctrines, others 
regarded him as one of the greatest of moral teachers, and 
even as a prophet of Christ and a propounder of Christian 
principles. Again, the spirit of romance laid hands upon 
him, and made of him a worker of magic and of his Aeneas 
the hero of a tale of chivalry. So this many-sided Vergil, 
most of whose characteristics were wholly the creation of 
the Middle Ages, served the turn of every man, cleric or 
layman, the scholar who wished illustrative examples for 
his treatise on grammar or metrics, the poet who was looking 
for a model for his Latin hexameters, or the courtier who 
was searching for marvelous stories with which to entertain 
his emperor. 

Chaucer inherited much of this mediaeval tradition, es- 
pecially the desire to make of the Aeneid a chivalric romance. 
The sympathies of the Middle Ages had been chiefly with 
the deserted Dido, and Chaucer too treated her as one 
of the "saints of Cupid," a true sister of Ariadne. But 
Chaucer was ahead of many of his contemporaries in his 



INTRODUCTION 9 

actual first-hand knowledge of the Aeneid. While he did 
not display the perspicuity of a Gavin Douglas in seeing 
Vergil's purpose in writing the story of Aeneas and Dido, 
neither did he accept the charge of Dares Phrygius that 
Aeneas was a traitor to his country, nor did he admit such 
distortions in his story as did Caxton, a century later. He 
had included Vergil in his reading, unusually wide for his 
times, and his error was due to misplaced emphasis and 
biased judgment and not to ignorance. 

In the full Renaissai^cC; such errors as those of Caxton 
were no longer possible. \ The spread of humanistic learning 
had brought Vergil into the curriculum of school and uni- 
versity, and it would have been impossible for any of the 
sixteenth-century translators to have believed that he was 
rendering the Aeneid into English when he was working on 
the Eneydes. The new appreciation of Vergil shown by 
the writers of the Renaissance on the continent, by Petrarch 
and his followers in Italy and France, was reflected later 
in the poetry and criticism of England. The sixteenth cen- 
tury was a period of the development of the pastoral and 
of the growth of the Renaissance principles of criticism, which 
have been formulated into a creed by a modern critic, the 
main tenet of which is, "Taking things on the whole, 'the 
ancients' have anticipated almost everything, and in every- 
thing that they have anticipated have done so well that 
the best chance of success is simply to imitate them." To 
this creed subscribed Spenser and his contemporaries, often 
limiting "the ancients" to little more than Vergil, both 
in connection with the pastoral, and, more especially, in 
relation to the epic, although each is tinged with the influ- 
ence of Renaissance models as well. 

The seventeenth century is a period of transition, in 
which the chief tendency showing the influence of Vergil 
is the development of the classical epic, under the influence 



10 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

of the rules of Aristotle and Boileau in respect to form, and 
the interest in history and the study of the Bible in subject- 
matter. Towering over all the httle men who tried to 
compose epics was the giant Milton, to whose scholarly ap- 
preciation of classic models was united a supreme poetic 
genius. 

With the development of the pseudo-classic theory and 
practice during the seventeenth and early eighteenth cen- 
turies, the emphasis came to be placed more and more on 
the form and st3de of hterary production. It was an age 
of translation and imitation, and the two greatest names in 
the poetr}'^ of this period were those of Dryden and Pope. 
It was natural that Pope should admire the sweetness of 
versification of the Eclogues of Vergil, and that he and his 
followers should try to emulate it by imitating the frame- 
work of the poems and copying their phraseology, and giving 
to their work the same careful polish that Vergil was reported 
to have bestowed upon his lines. The easiest way to analyze 
the influence of Vergil, is to consider its effect upon the 
various poetic genres. The other characteristic literary forms 
of the centurj' besides the pastoral were satire and didactic 
poetry, and as the former usually took the form of the 
mock-epic, it afforded further opportunity for VergiUan 
imitation. When the didactic poetry concerned itself with 
the country and the occupations of the farmer, it naturally 
turned to the Georgics of Vergil for a model. The greatest 
of the didactic poets was James Thomson, who appreciated 
not only Vergil's practical wisdom, but his love of nature 
and his powers of description, and combined them in the 
Seasons, a poem which had an astonishing and long-con- 
tinued influence both at home and abroad. 

There was little real understanding of the actual spirit 
and purpose of Vergil until the nineteenth century, when 
the historical method came to be used in criticism, and 



INTRODUCTION 11 

students of the Latin poet endeavored to place him in his 
environment and determine its effect on him and his influence 
on it. But in the Romantic period, criticism was too much 
a matter of personal likes and dislikes to apply the historical 
method with impartiality. The searcher after truth was 
too prone to approach a writer with a preconceived idea of 
what he ought to find there, and then find it. And in this 
time of zeal for the spontaneous, the unstudied, and the 
subjective, Vergil fared badly and exerted little influence 
on English poetry, for he was generally condemned by the 
one word "artificial." Landor, although he imitated Vergil 
and greatly admired certain portions of his work, was 
moved by this romantic spirit of individual criticism, and 
denounced other parts of his poetry, such as Aeneas' parting 
words to Dido, as frigid, stiff, in short, artificial. 

But as the century went on, the growth of scholarly in- 
terest in Vergil and real knowledge of his place in history 
and the purpose of his work, brought about a change in the 
attitude of literary men. They still applied the test of per- 
sonal preference, but although they might prefer some other 
poet to Vergil, they did not banish him altogether, and he 
had a recognizable influence on many of the poets of the 
period to a greater or less degree. None of them seems to 
have understood or loved Vergil as did Tennyson, and cer- 
tainly on none of them did he have a greater influence. 
Tennyson is the last of our poets to have absorbed his Vergil 
so thoroughly that the Latin poet has become a part of his 
life and thought. As the horizon of men of letters has 
steadily broadened, and new interests and problems have 
taken their attention, inevitably the influence of Vergil 
as of all the classics upon EngHsh poetry has decreased. 
In the nineteenth century it is necessary to confine the 
treatment largely to certain men who represent the sym- 
pathy or reaction of an individual spirit toward the genius 



12 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

of the Roman poet. Incidental echoes in the work of other 
men are of httle significance, and consequently call for but 
brief discussion. 

It is difficult to prevent a book of this kind from falling 
into a mere list of parallel passages from Vergil and the 
Enghsh poets. A certain amount of quotation is necessary, 
however, to show the extent of any poet's use of Vergilian 
material, and the manner in which he adapted or assimilated 
it. But in recording the similarities, I trust I have avoided 
the pitfall yawning before all commentators, that of carry- 
ing the analysis of indebtedness to Vergil too far, so that 
it verges on absurdity. I hope I have avoided offending 
the manes of Tennyson and moving the shade of Landor 
to sarcastic laughter. It was Landor who thus ridiculed 
the attempts of critics to find echoes of the classics in the 
most unlikely places. In his Citation of William Shakespeare 
he writes, "Master Silas did interrupt this discourse by 
saying, 'May it please your worship, the constable is wait- 
ing.' Whereat Sir Thomas said tartly, 'And let him wait,'" 
to which the "Editor" has appended the following footnote: 
"It has been suggested that this answer was borrowed from 
Vergil, and goes strongly against the genuineness of the 
manuscript. The editor's memory was upon the stretch to 
recollect the words: the learned critic supplied them: 
'"Solum Aeneas vocat." et vocet oro.' The editor could 
only reply, indeed weakly, that calling and waiting are not 
exactly the same, imless when tradesmen rap and gentle- 
men are leaving town." 



CHAPTER II 

THE MEDIAEVAL TRADITION 

The Vergilian tradition was unbroken by temporary 
loss of his works or diminution in his popularity. Through- 
out the Middle Ages, his poems and his personality were 
powerful factors in the intellectual life of the times. As 
poet, rhetorician and grammarian, as moralist, prophet, 
writer of romance and magician, he played a prominent 
part in the thought of all ranks of men, from the scholar 
to the peasant.^ It was Chaucer, inheriting all the gath- 
ered reverence of fourteen centuries, who wrote. 

Glory and honour, Virgil Mantuan, 
Be to thy name! and I shal, as I can, 
Folow thy lantern, as thou gost biforn.'^ 

Some, like Dante and Chaucer himself, did follow, with 
only a few deviations from the straight path, but it must be 
admitted that other eager spirits seized the lantern from 
the hand of their guide, and ran into all sorts of curious 
byways and blind alleys, drawing Vergil after them. 

The role which Vergil plays today as the greatest of Latin 
poets was not his most important part in the Middle Ages. 
With the decline of literature which came in the third and 
fourth centuries, the influence of his works as poems became 
a matter of externals only. The form and style and subject- 

1 In this first portion of the chapter I am following the well-known 
discussion in Vergil in the Middle Ages, by Domenico Comparetti. 
* Legend of Good Women : Dido. 1-3. 

13 



14 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

matter continued to serve as models for much of the mediae- 
val Latin poetry, both pagan and Christian,^ but the 
spirit of the master had vanished, or was too much obscured 
by the mists of grammar and rhetoric which surrounded him 
to be caught by any of his imitators, even those nearest him 
in time. A gleam of true poetic appreciation was visible 
here and there, but mostly in the churchmen who confessed 
to a worldly love for the Aeneid which enticed them from 
their spiritual duties. The popularity of the stoiy of Dido 
never waned, and it furnished the subject for numerous 
stage representations, even in the days of the Roman em- 
perors and also later in the Renaissance, and ■ for tapes- 
tries and pictures. Yet one of the chief occupations of the 
men who studied and knew the poems, was the making of 
centos, whereby Vergil became the mouthpiece of senti- 
ments by no means his own, and the author of a tragedy of 
Medea or an epitome of the Old Testament. 

Dante, of course, is the great exception to all this, for 
while his conception of Vergil is in some respects based on 
the mediaeval ideas, it is lifted far above them by his poetic 
sympathy and admiration for the Aeneid. He is like the 
mediaeval monk in his tendency to allegorize, and in his 
belief in the omniscience of Vergil, but the poet nowhere 
appears in the Divina Commedia as a magician, and though 
he is a Christian in the poem, it is because he has gained 
since death the knowledge that the gods he worshipped in 
life were false gods, and the truth is to be found only in 
Christianity. Dante says that Vergil is his favorite poet, 
and his constant use of echoes from the Latin proves the 
fact. Yet he is no servile imitator of Vergil. He brings 

* The most prominent example is the Waltharius, a Latin poem of 
the tenth century, by Ekkehard, a monk of St. Gall. See Zappert, 
Virgils Fortleben im Mittelalter, for a collection of Vergilian echoes in 
mediaeval poetry, in Latin and in the vernaculars. 



THE MEDIAEVAL TRADITION 15 

to him the sympathy of one great poet for another, and 
becomes his interpreter rather than his imitator. Dante, 
whose patriotism was the ruHng passion of his hfe, recognized 
no break between the history of Rome and that of Italy, 
and looked upon the Aeneid as the great national poem of 
his country,- His conception of Vergil as essentially a na- 
tional poet was an important factor in his sympathy for the 
author of the epic of Italy. It was, then, no mere accident, 
and no mere compliance with the mediaeval veneration for 
Vergil which made Dante choose him for a guide. The 
choice was based upon a love of Vergil which was a funda- 
mental part of his nature. It has been said that to Dante 
Vergil symbolized the imperial ideal, but even though he was 
so allegorized, he is at the same time a living figure in the 
poem, a real personality, if not the true Augustan Vergil, yet 
something nearer to it than the Vergil of the mediaeval 
clergy. In this poetic appreciation of the work and per- 
sonality of Vergil, Dante showed himself a precursor of the 
Renaissance. 

Vergil's popularity among the grammarians began early. 
Suetonius says that Q. Caecilius Epirota, a freedman of At- 
ticus, was the first to use his poems as textbooks of gram- 
mar in his school, and by the time of Nero, Seneca could say, 
"Grammaticus futurus Vergilium scrutatur." His aptness 
of phrase delighted the grammarians, and they adopted more 
illustrations from his poetry than from the works of any 
other Latin writer. So copious are the quotations in the 
textbooks of Nonius, Priscian, and Donatus, that, accord- 
ing to Comparetti, it would be possible to reconstruct from 
them practically the whole of the Eclogues, Georgics, and 
Aeneid, if the manuscripts of Vergil had all been lost. It 
is not strange, therefore, that a grammarian of the seventh 
century should adopt as his most natural title, the name, 
Publius Vergilius Maro. 



16 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

As a rhetorician, too, Vergil's reputation began soon after 
his own time. Arellius Fuscus, an orator and friend of the 
elder Seneca, freely adapted Vergil in his speeches. At 
the beginning of the second century, Annius Florus dis- 
cussed what had become a popular question in his treatise 
entitled Vergilius orator an poeta. The rhetoricians formed 
their rules according to his practice, and later Macrobius 
praised Vergil for having observed the rules of rhetoric. 
The pupils of the schools throughout the Middle Ages made 
such extensive use of the poems of Vergil as textbooks, that 
it is natural that he should have become for them the high- 

f^' est type of grammarian and rhetorician, the ideal dericus. 
As such he appeared in the thirteenth century romance of 
Dolopathos, endowed with the attributes and the official 
robes of a mediaeval teacher. 

In these two aspects, however, the mediaeval Vergil had 
little effect upon later literature. But as a moral teacher 
and as a prophet of Christ, his influence was felt even down 
into the eighteenth century in England, and his fame as 

A a magician, while not so long-lived among the cultured, 
lingered on through the time of Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate, 
and Hawes, and on the continent called forth a formal 
attack from Gabriel Naude as late as the seventeenth cen- 
tury. It still survives among the people of Italy. 

Aelius Donatus, in the fourth century, the first to attribute 
allegorical significance to the poems of Vergil, found in the 
three poems, the Eclogues, the Georgics, and the Aeneid, 
the three stages in man's development, the pastoral, the 
agricultural, and the martial. Some of the interpretations 
in the commentary of Servius were of an allegorical nature, 
such as the famous explanation of the golden branch. The 
tendency was a persistent one, and natural enough in view 
of the mediaeval fondness for writing allegory. It afforded 
opportunity for every sort of extravagance, and the height 



THE MEDIAEVAL TRADITION 17 

of absurdity was reached in the De Continentia Vergiliana 
of Fabius Planciades Fulgentius, who lived not later than the 
sixth century. He gave an elaborate interpretation of the 
Aeneid as a representation of the progress of the human 
soul, abandoning the Eclogues and Georgics as too deep 
for him to understand. He spoke on the authority of the 
poet himself, for the shade of Vergil, a gloomy, superior 
apparition, appeared to him in person and instructed him 
as to the correct meaning of the epic. Bernard of Chartres 
carried on the tradition, and Dante in the Convito discussed 
the "allegory of the ages of man contained in the Aeneid." 
John of Salisbury devoted a whole chapter of the Policraticus 
to a detailed analysis of the Aeneid as an allegory of the 
human soul. The notion of a hidden meaning was still 
strong in the prologues of the several books of Gavin Douglas' 
translation of the Aeneid, and in Spenser's Letter to Sir 
Walter Raleigh. 

Rather closely allied to this notion of Vergil as a moral 
teacher, was the firmly grounded behef that he had proph- 
esied the coming of Christ. The remarkably pure and 
noble character of his life made people all the more ready 
to accept the author of the famous fourth Eclogue as a 
pagan Isaiah, especially as the imagery in the two pictures 
of the reign of peace on earth was so similar. This idea, 
which persisted far into modem times, in the Middle Ages 
was one of the most prevalent of the traditions. In the 
Mystery Plays, Vergil appeared as one of the prophets of 
the Messiah, and was called upon for his testimony. Some- 
times he was regarded as an unconscious witness of the 
Incarnation, and one well-known legend represents St. 
Paul at the tomb of Vergil, mourning over his lost oppor- 
tunity for converting one who was so nearly a Christian, 
and would have been so, save for the accident of having 
died too soon. 



/ 

18 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

In spite of these curious perversions of the meaning and 
purpose of the poems of Vergil, there survived a thorough 
knowledge of their contents. Even the romances which 
treat of the Aeneas story and of the life of VergU were based 
on a knowledge of the original, although its proportions 
were rather obscured. These romances are one of the most 
interesting developments of the mediaeval treatment of 
Vergil. The story of Aeneas supplied one more subject to 
the romancers who were busy transforming the adventures 
of Alexander and the legends of Thebes and Troy into forms 
more fitted to the ideas of the period. " Classical narratives," 
says Comparetti, "were compelled to adopt romantic 
dress to suit the taste of the time." * As he very justly 
points out, this is part of the same tendency which led 
painters of the Middle Ages to put into their pictures the 
costumes and surroundings of their own time and country, 
regardless of the subject. The interest in the Troy material 
was very great, and was increased by the belief prevalent 
among the people of western Europe that they could trace 
their descent from the Trojans. Hence the preference for 
the narrative of Dares the Phrygian over that of Dictys the 
Cretan, as the former was written from the Trojan point 
of view, the latter from the Greek. These two mediaeval 
Latin prose narratives were the authorities on the subject. 
Both purported to be translations from contemporary ac- 
counts in Greek, and where Homer differed from them, he 
was considered to be in the wrong.* Upon them were based 
the main versions of the Troy story, the Roman de Troie 
of Benoit de Saint-Maure, which was translated into Latin 
prose by Guido delle Colonne, the De Bello Trojano of 

* Comparetti, Vergil in the M.A., p. 242. 

* Homer was known only in the Latin epitome, the Iliaa Latina 
of Baebius Italicus, or "Pindar the Theban."^ 



THE MEDIAEVAL TRADITION 19 

Joseph of Exeter, and either directly or indirectly, many 
of the later treatments of this material. 

The Aeneid of Vergil, being well known and much ad- 
mired in the Middle Ages, furnished the basis for romances 
on the story of Aeneas. The Romans d^ Eneas, a French 
poem of the twelfth century, the oldest extant version of 
Vergil's poem in a vulgar tongue, was evidently written by 
a man who had the Aeneid before him. It is far from a 
literal translation, however, for it expands some incidents, 
suppresses others, changes at times the order of events, 
adds long descriptions and accounts of marvels of various 
kinds, discredits the intervention of the gods, but transforms 
Dido's priestess into a sorceress, and transports the whole 
narrative into the atmosphere of mediaeval romance. It 
does not plunge at once in medias res, but begins with an 
account of the early history and fall of Troy. The most 
interesting expansion is that of the Lavinia episode. The 
daughter of Latinus is a mere shadow in the Aeneid, but 
in the Eneas she becomes a truly sentimental maiden, who 
falls in love with Eneas when she sees him from her tower, 
as he passes along attended by his chevaliers, faints when 
she fears that he is untrue to her, and shows all the char- 
acteristics of a mediaeval love-sick heroine. Eneas too is a 
model lover. He sighs and groans and takes to his bed in a 
thoroughly conventional fashion, and manages though pale 
and wan to appear before Lavinia's tower in time to save 
her from utter despair at his absence. It all seems like a 
ridiculous caricature of the Aeneid, but the poet had no such 
intention. He was merely conforming to the romantic 
ideals of his age. 

The Eneas was imitated in the German romance, Eneit, 
by Heinrich von Veldeke. In the latter part of the fif- 
teenth century there was another French handling of the 
story, the Livre des Eneydes, translated into English by 



20 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

Caxton in 1490. All of these show a strong tendency to 
place undue emphasis on the sentimental, erotic portions 
of the narrative, and all incur the criticism which Gavin 
Douglas makes of Caxton's treatment of the Dido episode: 

So that the feird buik of Eneados, 
Tuiching the luif and deith of Dido quene, 
The twa part of his volume doith contene, 
That in the text of Virgill, traistis me, 
The twelft part scars conteins, as ye ma se.^ 

Not only the career of Aeneas, but the life of his creator 
was recognized as a legitimate subject for romanticizing, 
i ; In the Dolopathos, a Latin prose romance of the thirteenth 
V century, later put into French verse by Herbers, Vergil 

appears as the mediaeval clerk, philosopher and astrologer, 
the tutor and guardian of Lucimien, the son of Dolopathos, 
king of Sicily. The figure of Vergil here is approaching the 
popular conception of him as a magician; but although he 
has the power of prophecy through his knowledge of astrol- 
ogy, he uses it, not because of his own magic powers or 
through any alliance with the Devil, but through the grace 
of God. It can be easily seen, however, that it is no long 
step from this conception to that contained in Walter Burley's 
Lives of the Philosophers or the sixteenth century Lyfe of 
Virgilius, which had a French original. The Dolopathos 
belongs to the literary tradition rather than the popular, 
even containing quotations from the works of Vergil, but it 
is, as Comparetti says, the "final parody of the literary 
tradition." ^ 

A religious and almost superstitious veneration for Vergil 
began in the days of Silius Italicus, Statins, and Martial, 

^ Douglas, Virgil, Proloug of the First Buik of Eneados. 
^ Comparetti, Vergil in the M. A., p. 238. 



THE MEDIAEVAL TRADITION 21 

who observed his birthday with sacrifices, and honored his 
tomb hke that of a deified emperor. By the time of Macro- 
bius he had attained the dignified position of an infalUble 
authority upon all subjects, including the occult science of 
astrology. Many apocryphal anecdotes were related in 
the successive biographies of the poet. Here perhaps was 
a prophecy of the growth of that extraordinary mediaeval 
conception of Vergil as a magician. 

It is one of the most fascinating phases of Vergilian 
study, this survival in the minds and affections of the people 
of the personality of a great poet whose works have always 
appealed to the educated and cultured. His name, it is 
said, still finds a place in the folk-stories of Italy and even 
in the peasant games of Poland. There are various theories 
as to the origin of the Vergil legend. Compare tti says that 
it originated in Naples, among the lower classes, and was 
founded on local records connected with Vergil's long stay 
in that city and the celebrity of his tomb there. Tunison, 
on the other hand, holds that it grew out of the linking of 
Vergil's name with certain legends afloat in Germany, 
whence they were transferred to Italy. "In effect," he says, 
"these stories were like blank forms of legal documents 
which only required a word here and there to fit them for a 
great variety of uses. Virgil's name was simply one of these 
accidental strokes, out of many failures that were forgotten, 
which hit the popular fancy." ^ Graf,^ taking the middle 
course, says that the legends were popular in origin, but 
were connected with the hterary legend. This seems the 
most reasonable view to take of the matter. The legends 
were certainly firmly estabhshed in the popular mind when 
Conrad of Querfurt and Gervase of Tilbury visited Naples, 
and brought home accounts of the marvels they found there. 

8 Tunison, Master Virgil, p. 96. 

' Graf, Roma nella Memoria e nelle Immaginazioni de Medio Aevo. 



22 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

It seems natural to suppose that the powers of prophecy and 
the knowledge of astrology which the Middle Ages assigned 
to Vergil, as well as the familiarity with magic rites displayed 
in the eighth Eclogue and the intimate acquaintance with the 
Underworld shown in the sixth book of the Aeneid, may 
all have had an effect in fostering the belief that the poet 
himself possessed magical powers and held intercourse with 
the Devil. 

Whatever their origin may have been, there were many 
curious legends connected with the name of Vergil, both 
at Naples and at Rome. He added to the comfort of the 
former city in many ways, and at Rome he built the wonder- 
ful Salvatio Romae, the palace or mirror, according to the 
two forms of the legend, which protected Rome from her 
enemies. Several of the legends ^^ are spoken of in the 
account of Vergil given by Walter Burley in his De Vita et 
Moribus Philosophorum, adopted with a qualifying creditur 
from the De Naturis Rerum of Alexander Neckam. This 
is a curious mixture of fact and fancy, but it has not reached 
the pure legend of the sixteenth century Lyje of Virgilius, 
an English translation of a French story-book, Les Fails 
Merveilleux de Virgille, made by John Doesborcke, and 
printed by him in Gothic letter with woodcuts at Antwerp. 
The book is without date, but it probably was printed about 
1525 or 1530. The title-page gives an idea of the character 
of the narrative: "This boke treateth of the lyfe of Virgilius 
and of his death, and many marvayles, that he dyd in his 
lyfe tyme by witchcraft and nigromansy, thorough the 
help of the devylls of hell." 

Although Englishmen, such as Gervase of Tilbury and Alex- 
ander Neckam, were among the first to give literary expres- 

'° For a full account of Vergil the magician, see Comparetti, op. cit., 
Part II, Tuniaon, op. cit., Graf, op. cit., and for the legends current in 
Italy today, C. G. Leland, Unpvhlished Legends oj Virgil. 



THE MEDIAEVAL TRADITION 23 

sion to the legends about Vergil, these stories had com- 
paratively little effect on later English literature. Some 
of the Middle English versions of the Seven Sages connect 
the name of Vergil with the story of the Salvatio Romae, 
which Chaucer merely alludes to and which Gower relates 
in full. Gower makes an allusion to one of the magician's 
love-adventures, which is described by Stephen Hawes. 
Marlowe, in his Doctor Faustus, speaks of his magic power. 
But there is no trace, as far as I know, of any popular belief 
in Vergil the magician, as there was in other countries on 
the continent with which Vergil had had no connection. 
Merlin, Roger Bacon and Doctor Faustus furnished the neces- 
sary support for the English love of the marvelous, and Vergil 
for the most part, took his true place as a great poet rather 
than as a great magician. 

Inasmuch as scholarship in mediaeval England was 
almost wholly in the hands of the churchmen, it is to their 
writings that we must look to find indications of the attitude 
of the period toward Vergil. The struggle which went on 
in the minds of the clergy on the continent between their 
love for the beauties of pagan literature and their abhor- 
rence of its doctrines, was paralleled in England. They 
recognized the importance of the classics in education as a 
basis of culture, and could not forget what they had learned 
in their youth. Like Jerome, they quoted Vergil on one 
page and inveighed against him on another. Alcuin, who 
had loved the Mantuan in his youth, later instructed his 
pupils not to read him. Yet his own letters were full of 
Vergilian echoes. Herbert, Bishop of Norwich, told of a 
dream in which Christ appeared to him and reproved him 
for his affection for the classical writers. St. Odo had a vision 
in which he saw a vessel, very beautiful to look upon, but 
full of poisonous serpents. When he awoke, he realized 



24 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

that the vessel represented Vergil, and the serpents were the 
pernicious doctrines contained in his poems. 

But no matter how strongly they might protest against 
the morals of Vergil, nothing could eradicate from their 
minds the poetry they had learned in childhood. Perhaps 
this poet enjoyed some degree of immunity from their at- 
tacks because of the traditional connection of his name 
with Christianity. However that may be, he was a general 
favorite for quotation. The earliest evidence of knowl- 
edge of Vergil in Britain is in the book of Bishop Gildas, 
in which he quotes from the Aeneid ^^ in the midst of his 
lamentations over the downfall of his country. The His- 
tory of the Britons, also, which goes under the name of Nennius, 
cites a line from the third book of the Georgics,^^ and in 
the curious genealogies of Brutus, gives evidence of some 
knowledge of the adventures of Aeneas. 

There is no room to doubt that Aldhelm was familiar 
with all the works of Vergil. While some of his classical 
quotations may be due to the careful study of the illustra- 
tions in a mediaeval grammar, this is probably not the 
case with Vergil. In his Liber de Septenario, et de Metris, 
Aenigmatibus, ac Pedum Regulis, the illustrative quotations 
from the Aeneid, Georgics and Eclogues are nearly as numer- 
ous as those from all other Latin poetry put together. He 
shows familiarity, not only with single lines, but with long 
passages, such as the description of Fama, which he quotes 
in one of his Riddles and imitates to some extent in his 
picture of Superbia, and the account of Allecto, which he 
also follows, even more closely, in a passage in the poetical 
version of the De Laudibus Virginitatis}^ Beside these 
longer passages, this poem is full of Vergilian reminiscences. 
The opening words, omnipotens genitor, strike the note at 

" Aen. 9. 24. i^ Georg. 3. 25. 

'^ De Laudibus Virginitatis, 11. 1635 ff. 



THE MEDIAEVAL TRADITION 25 

once, and a mere glance down the pages at the ends of the 
lines will reveal a large number of verse-tags which show 
that the writer's chief acquaintance with the hexameter 
has been in the poems of Vergil. Such, for example, are the 
following : caelestibus armis, jama super aethera notus (applied 
to Gregorius), quo non praestantior alter, stipante caterva, 
limina portae, cornua cantu, and many others. Phrases too 
within the lines sometimes give a brief passage almost the 
appearance of a Vergilian cento. That he knows also some 
of the literary legends which had gathered about the biog- 
raphy of Vergil, is evident from his reference in his treatise 
on meters to the story about Vergil's writing his own epitaph. 
The Venerable Bede was not so devoted to Vergil as his 
predecessor. The quotations are not so numerous, the 
echoes in his poetry are fewer, and in the illustrative quo- 
tations in his technical works there is not such a preponder- 
ance of lines from Vergil. He rather prides himself on his 
unlikeness to the Mantuan in his choice of subject-matter, 
saying in the hymn celebrating Queen Ethelrida, a holy 
virgin, 

Bella Maro resonet, nos pacis dona canamus; 
Munera nos Christi, bella Maro resonet." 

Yet in the midst of his narrative in the Ecclesiastical History^ 
he can write, "Conticuere omnes intentique ora tenebant, 
quern res exitum haberet solliciti expectantes." And 
echoes in his poetry, though comparatively few, are to be 
found. The lines describing a gust of wind striking a ship 
in the De Miraculis Sancti Cuthberti, go back to the Aeneid 
for a model as so many storm pictures have done since 
the days of Vergil. Phrases too like inque dies, haec ubi 
dicta, instaurat honorem, nee me sententia fallit, some of 
which had become commonplaces in narrative poetry, mark 

" Eccl. Hist. Bk. IV. Chap. 20. 



26 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

the Vergilian influence. The Cuculus sive Veris et Hiemis 
Conflictus, variously assigned to Bede and Alcuin, is an 
eclogue in amoebean form, with several reminiscences of 
the master's phraseology, such as Palaemon's desine plura, 
which closes the contest. The most significant thing, how- 
ever, is that without exception, all of the quotations in the 
De Temporum Ratione are from Vergil, and that all of them 
are given without his name, several of them beginning with 
such words as et Poeta descrihens, de qua Poeta, meminit 
horum et Poeta. For the Middle Ages Vergil was truly the 
Poeta par excellence}^ 

To Bede the fall of Troy and the wanderings of Aeneas 
were historical facts. They found a place, together with 
actual events, in his chronicle of the Third Age of the World 
in the De Temporihus and the De Temporum Ratione. But 
to Alcuin, Vergil was the falsus Maro, and he did not wish 
his pupils to have anything to do with the Vergilii mendacia. 
Alcuin was an excellent example of the mediaeval ecclesi- 
astical attitude toward Vergil, for he who said, 

Auribus ille tuis male frivola falsa sonabit,'* 

had in his youth been Virgilii amplius quam psalmorum 
amator," and what he had learned in those days of early 
devotion remained an integral part of his intellectual equip- 
ment. He made frequent use of this despised and beloved 
falsator to point a moral in his prose works, and neither 
Bede nor Aldhelm can equal him in the number of Vergilian 
imitations and echoes in his poetry.^* In his technical 
treatises too the quotations from Vergil outnumber those 

" Cf. John of Salisbury, Policraticus, VII. 6. 

*^ Carmen, prefixed to Compendium in Canticum Canticorum. 

" Anonymous Vita Alcuini, Chap. 1. 

" For a copious Ust of VergiUan quotations, allusions, and echoes 
in the works of Alcuin, see Omera Floyd Long, The Attitude of Alcuin 
toward Vergil, in Studies in Honor of B. L. Gildersleeve. 



THE MEDIAEVAL TRADITION 27 

from all other authors put together by a ratio of more than 
four to one. And his excuse is the familiar appeal to the 
authority of the apostle Paul, who "aurum sapientiae, in 
stercore poetarum inventum, in divitias ecclesiasticae trans- 
tulit prudentiae; sicut omnes sancti doctores, eius exemplo 
eruditi, fecerunt." ^^ 

The search for Vergilian influence in the vernacular litera- 
ture of the Anglo-Saxons is attended with little success. 
Alfred shows the characteristic mediaeval ignorance or 
neglect of chronology when he says, " Peah Omerus se goda 
sceop, l)e mid Crecu selest was: se was Firgilies lareow; se 
Firgilius waes mid Laedenwarum selest," ^^ and again in 
verse speaks of Homer as "Firgilies freond and lareow." 
The poems assigned to Caedmon and Cynewulf naturally 
depend on the Biblical narrative for their story and structure. 
The briefer secular poetry, such as Widsith, Deor, Maldon 
and Brunanhurgh, show no traces of Vergilian style, subject- 
matter or treatment, except in so far as the last two give 
evidence of the truth of the following statement by W. P. 
Ker: "There are certain commonplaces of actual life which 
reappear in the heroic literature of different countries and 
make a kind of prosaic stuff for the poetic imagination to 
work upon. Epic requires a particular kind of warfare, 
not too highly organized, and the manner of the Homeric 
battle is found again in Germany, Ireland, and old France." ^^ 

The theory of Vergilian influence on Beowulf, however, 
has been seriously advanced by excellent scholars, and calls 
for some discussion. The most complete statement of the 
case is that by Prof. Fr. Klaeber, of the University of Min- 
nesota.^^ After a general discussion of the matter, he pro- 

» Ejristle 147. " Boethius, Cap. XLI. 

" W. P. Ker, The Dark Ages, p. 81. 

** Archiv fiir das Studium der Neiieren Sprachen und Literaturen, 
Band 126, pp. 40-48, 339-359. 



28 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

ceeds to set forth the parallels in such things as the existence 
of accounts of battles, of voyages over the sea, and of life 
at court, and in the ideas of Fate and of Heaven and Hell. 
He finds definite similarities in the first part of Beowulf, 
in the account of the hero's arrival and entertainment at 
the court of Hrothgar, and the landing of Aeneas on the 
shore of Africa and his treatment at Carthage. Others have 
also pointed out here a similarity to the reception of Ulysses 
by the Phaeacians. In his second article, Prof. Klaeber 
lists in great detail similarities in character-drawing, in situa- 
tion, in the expression of certain thoughts and feelings, and 
in certain incidents in the narrative, and finally resemblances 
in phraseology and Latinisms in construction. 

Such parallels are always interesting, but as proof of direct 
influence they are not always convincing. Prof. Klaeber 
himself is rather cautious, saying that many of the dis- 
coveries may rest upon accident, but that some seem to 
furnish incontestable proof and to lead to the conclusion 
that the influence of the Aeneid upon Old English litera- 
ture is greater than anyone has dared heretofore to sup- 
pose. If there were positive proof otherwise that the 
Beowulf poet knew Vergil and was copying him, these 
parallels would furnish excellent corroborative and illus- 
trative evidence. But there is no such positive proof, and 
the mere fact that two poets, both writmg epics, chose 
to represent a remarkable hero, who, after a sea voyage, 
was welcomed with hospitality by those on whose shores 
he landed, and entertained with a feast, does not demonstrate 
conclusively that the later poet was using the earher as a 
model. Nor is the point settled by observing that Beowulf 
and Aeneas both stand in awe of their God, that Hrothgar 
and Evander bewailed the loss of their youth or indulged in 
reminiscences of former days (are they not merely furnishing 
two examples of the universal truth of Horace's descriptive 



THE MEDIAEVAL TRADITION 29 

phrase, laudator temporis actif), that the halls of Hrothgar 
and Dido were adorned for the feast ("ein merkwtirdiger 
Parallele " !) , that the warriors in both poems thought that 
they might never see their homes again, that the heroes 
resolved to conquer or die, that Grendel and Polyphemus 
were both horrid monsters, that an old man lamented over 
his loneliness after the death of his son, and Dido bewailed 
her loneliness for Aeneas, or that the many other parallels 
adduced, of which those mentioned are a fair sample, can 
be drawn. Of the similarities in phraseology. Prof. Klaeber 
himself admits that it is difficult to speak with certainty. 

It is of course perfectly possible that the Beowulf poet 
knew Vergil, for we have already seen that writers from 
the time of Gildas to that of Alcuin gave positive evidence 
of an acquaintance with his works. But there seems to me 
to be nothing in all these illustrations to make it certain 
that he was following Vergil, either consciously or uncon- 
sciously. The closest parallels are, as Prof. Klaeber says, 
those in the first part of Beowulf, from the arrival of the 
hero to the slaying of Grendel. Closest of all, perhaps, is 
that between the song of the bard at Hrothgar's court, of 

how the Almighty made the earth, 

fairest fields enfolded by water, 

set, triumphant, sun and moon 

for a light to lighten the land-dwellers,^ 

with the song of lopas, 

hie canit errantem lunam solisque labores, 
unde hominum genus et pecudes, unde imber et ignes, 
Arcturum pluviasque Hyadas geminosque Triones. 

{Aen. 1. 742-4) 

^ Beowulf, 11. 92-95. Gummere's translation in The Oldest English 
Epic. 



30 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

But from this as from the other parallels, no more definite 
conclusion can be drawn than that expressed by Prof. Brandl, 
that these parallels cannot be used as proof of a direct 
dependence of Beowulf on Vergil, as they may all be ex- 
plained on some different ground. They do, however, he 
thinks, point out the relationship between the composition 
of Beowulf and that of the Roman artificial epic, indicating 
that the methods are the same in each case.^^ 

The barren centuries which followed the death of Alfred 
gave little evidence of the influence of Vergil, except in the 
case of such Latin poetry as continued to be written. The 
writers of Saints' Lives, which was the chief form of hterature 
of that time, set themselves definitely in opposition to all 
classical learning. Aelfric tells us, for example, that when 
they were converted St. Eugenia and St. Basil utterly 
abandoned the learning and literature of the Greeks and 
^Romans. Some writers even gloried in their ignorance of 
the ancient authors. But with the revival of learning of the 
twelfth century came a renewed interest in Latin, and the 
writers of the period became the chief exemplars and de- 
fenders of a classical education. 

The most learned man of the twelfth century was un- 
doubtedly John of Salisbury, whose Policraticus and Meta- 
logicus give ample evidence of his wide reading and his 
advocacy of the study of classical literature. In this read- 
ing, Vergil was of course included. As the recent editor of 
his Policraticus says in his Prolegomena, "Vergilii Bucolica, 
Georgica, Aeneida passim citat. Servii et Bernardi Silves- 
tris commentariis usus est et Vita Vergilii quae sub Donati 
nomine circumfertur." ^^ There are about a hundred refer- 

" Paul's Grundriss der Germanischen Philologie, Vol. II, p. 1008. 
For a refutation of this theory, see H. Munro Chad wick, The Heroic 
Age, pp. 74-76. 

*' Clemens C. I. Webb, Policraticus, Prol. 



THE MEDIAEVAL TRADITION 31 

ences to and quotations from the works of Vergil, cited in 
illustration of all kinds of topics, hunting, incantations, 
omens, dreams, the use of flattery, the qualities proper to 
princes and magistrates, the glory to be obtained from 
the praise of great writers. Vergil is by no means his 
favorite author, however. Ovid, Horace, Cicero, and St. 
Augustine are quoted far more frequently, and Valerius 
Maximus, Macrobius, Lucan, and Juvenal are quite as 
popular as the Mantuan. 

The chief interest in John of Salisbury's treatment of 
Vergil lies, not in these quotations and references, for these 
are not marked by any individuality, but in his allegorical 
interpretation of the Aeneid. ''Procedat tibi poeta Mantua- 
nus," he says, "qui sub imagine fabularum totius philoso- 
phiae exprimit veritatem." ^^ And in his last two chapters " 
he gives a definite illustration of what he means in this 
sentence. Following in general the example of Fulgentius, 
he interprets the first six books of the Aeneid as represent- 
ing the six ages of man. The name Eneas, he says, means 
merely the inhabitant of the body, "ennos enim, ut Grecis 
placet, habitator est, denias corpus et ab his componitur 
Eneas ut significet animam quasi carnis tugurio habitantem." 
This symboUc figure, then, passes through six stages in his 
career, each described in the story of one of the books of the 
Aeneid. The first book represents infancy attacked by 
storms, the second, youth, the third, young manhood, the 
fourth, the experience of ilHcit love restrained by reason 
in the person of Mercury, the fifth, maturity, the sixth, old 
age. "Constat enim," he concludes, "apud eos qui mentem 
diligentius perscrutantur auctorum Maronem geminae 
doctrinae vires declarasse, dum vanitate figmenti poetici 
philosophicae virtutis involvit archana." In the next 
chapter he appHes Vergil's description of the golden bough 

2« Bk. VI. chap. 22. « Bk. VIII. chaps. 24, 25. 



32 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

to the attempt of man to wrest from the tree of wisdom the 
branch of virtue. "Neque enim ad genitorem vitae, Deum 
scihcet, alter redit, nisi qui virtutis ramum excisum de 
hgno scientiae praetendit." But no one can tear off this 
branch without knowing the whole tree. "Hoc ipsum 
sensit et Maro, qui, hcet veritatis esset ignarus et in tenebris 
gentium ambularet, ad Ehseos campos felicium et cari geni- 
toris conspectus Eneam admittendum esse non credidit, 
nisi docente Sibilla, . . . ramum hunc . . . consecraret." 
Here is the interesting contrast with Alcuin. The later 
Christian feels that some use may be made of the stories 
which charmed and shocked the earlier ecclesiastic. He 
believes "nee verba nee sensus . . . gentilium fugiendos, 
dummodo vitentur errores." This reconcilement of pleasure 
and duty had an abiding charm which lasted long after the 
religious prejudice which gave it birth was a thing of the past. 

The same allegorizing tendency determines much of the 
treatment of the material in Alexander Neckam's De Natu- 
ris Rerum, with its frequent alternation of "Narratio" and 
"Adaptatio." He explains that when Vergil says that 
Aeneas had as a friend the fidus Achates, he means merely 
that he carried with him an agate (achates), a stone which 
had the power of rendering the bearer amabilem et facun- 
dum et potentem^^ In his chapter on bees, which is largely 
compiled from the fourth Georgic,^^ and contains a long 
quotation from it, he applies everything to human life and 
draws a moral from the activities and characteristics of 
the bees. 

Neckam has also come under the spell of the mediaeval 
legends in regard to Vergil, both literary and popular. He 
tells the story of the saving of Vergil's life by a gnat, which, 
according to the current tale, was the occasion of the writing 
of the Culex. But when he compared the poem with the 

" Bk. II. chap. 85. " Bk. II. chap. 163. 



THE MEDIAEVAL TRADITION 33 

story, he found that the circumstances were different.'*^ He 
also gives an account of some of the marvels attributed to 
Vergil, whose name was so closely associated with Naples, 
one of the places "in quibus artes floruerunt liberales."'^ 
This is the first literary expression of these popular stories 
about Vergil's miraculous power. They seem to have been 
recorded first by men like Gervase of Tilbury ^^ and Conrad 
of Querfurt, who brought them back from Italy, and it is 
possible that Neckam had heard them himself in Naples. 
He relates five of the wonders which had been ascribed to 
Vergil, one of which, the Salvatio Romae, had a wide vogue, 
and recurs several times in the literature of England. 

As Neckam tells it, the story runs as follows: Vergil 
built at Rome a noble palace, in which were images represent- 
ing all the nations of the world. There was also a bronze 
horseman, who, when any nation threatened to attack 
Rome, turned in the direction of the image of that country, 
and so warned the city of its danger. When Vergil was 
asked how long the palace would stand, he replied, "Until 
a virgin shall bear a child," and at the birth of Christ, the 
building suddenly fell to the ground. The same tale is 
told in Neckam's poem, De Laudibus Divinae Sapientiae, 
but with no mention of Vergil. The story is found in many 
forms, and connected with other names, such as that of 
Romulus. There are oriental analogues in stories of cities 
protected from the approach of strangers by a bronze duck, 

30 Bk. II. chap. 109. 'i Bk. II. chap. 174. 

32 See his OHa Imperialia, III. 10, 12, 13, 15, 16. He here tells the 
stories of the bronze fly, of the shambles, of the imprisonment of all 
the snakes in Naples under the Dominican gate, of the two marble 
heads on the gate, a smiling one on the right and a frowning one on 
the left, which determined the fortunes of all who entered, of Vergil's 
marvelous garden, of the statue with the trumpet, which warded off 
the winds from Vesuvius, of the heahng baths at Puteoli, and of the 
cave where no plots could be made. 



34 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

which has suggested that the classical story of the Capitoline 
geese may be the basis of the whole legend. According to 
another popular version of the story, the Salvatio Romae 
was a mirror, set up near the city, in which all events happen- 
ing in the world could be seen, and so any threatened danger 
could be averted. This forms one of the stories in the 
Middle English versions of the Seven Sages of Rome, usually 
associated with the name of Vergil, once with that of 
Merlin. It is this version that is told at length by Gower, 
and referred to by Chaucer in the Squieres Tale. According 
to Gower,^^ whose tale really belongs in spirit with that of 
Neckam, rather than two hundred years later, Vergil made 
a mirror "of his clergie," which should reflect any enemies 
who were about to make an attack on Rome. He 

sette it in the tounes ye 
Of marbre on a piler withoute. . . . 
So that whil thilke Mirour laste, 
Ther was no lond which mihte achieve 
With werre Rome for to grieve; 
Whereof was gret envie tho. 

At a certain time, Rome, whose emperor was named Crassus, 
was at war with Carthage under Hannibal and with "Puile." 
Her enemies were prevented from doing any harm to the 
city by the virtues of the mirror, so when three philosophers 
offered to destroy it, they accepted the proposition with 
alacrity. These three men went to Rome with a large 
amount of treasure which they secretly buried in two differ- 
ent places. Then they appeared before Crassus, and told 
him that they were able by the help of spirits which visited 
them in their dreams, to discover where gold was hidden. 
They offered to enrich the emperor, and he, being very 
covetous, accepted their offer. On successive days, they 
dug up the two hoards that they had buried, pretending that 

« Conf. Amantis, V. 2. 



THE MEDIAEVAL TRADITION 35 

the location had been revealed to them in the night. On 
the third day they announced that there was treasure 
"under the glas," and asked permission to dig there. Crassus 
demurred at this, fearing that harm might come to the 
mirror, but when the philosophers promised that they would 
so prop up the tower that there would be no possible danger, 
he consented. The three philosophers, therefore, under- 
mined the tower, first putting props under it as they had 
promised. But at night they set fire to the props and 
fled; the tower fell and the mirror was destroyed. The 
result was a general attack against Rome, and Hannibal 
slew so many noble Romans in one day that he got three 
bushels of gold rings from their fingers, and bridged the Tiber 
with their dead bodies. The Romans, in punishment of 
the "coveitise" of the emperor, which had caused all the 
mischief, poured molten gold down his throat. While 
Gower seems to be responsible for the addition of Carthage 
and Hannibal, the main outlines of the story are those which 
occur in the other accounts. Spenser assigns the manu- 
facture of a similar mirror to Merlin, and says he made it 
for King Ryence of Deheubarth. Just how the mirror 
survived the fall of the tower, I do not know, but John 
Evelyn tells us that in 1643 he visited the cathedral of St. 
Denis near Paris, and that in the treasury, which was "es- 
teemed one of the richest in Europe, . . . lay in a window 
a mirror of a kind of stone said to have belonged to the 
poet Virgil." It is interesting that this is the version of 
the legend which has survived in the witch-lore of Italy to 
the present day.^^ 

Neckam also tells the story of the golden leech, which 
Vergil made and put into a well in order to check the spread 

** See Leland, Unpublished Legends of Virgil, pp. 6, 7. For a com- 
plete account of the variants of this popular story, see Clouston, The 
Magical Elements in Chaucer's Squire's Tale. 



36 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

of a plague of leeches in Naples. Many years afterwards, 
when the well was cleaned and the golden leech removed, 
the plague returned, and could not be stayed until the 
talisman was found and restored to the well. It is to the 
similar story of the bronze fly which kept all other flies from 
the city, that Walter Map refers in the Apocalypsis Goliae, 

Lucanum video ducem bellantium; 
Formantem aereas muscas Virgilium, 

which, by a rather natural confusion with the subject of 
the fourth Georgic, was translated about 1600, 

And Virgil then did shape the small bees of the aire. 

This great magician also laid a spell on a shambles in Naples, 
so that meat placed in it would keep fresh indefinitely, 
much to the joy of the butchers, who had been troubled 
by the unnaturally rapid spoiling of their meat. Around 
his own garden Vergil had instead of a wall an impenetrable 
atmosphere, and for his own use he had a bridge of air on 
which he could travel to any quarter of the globe. 

The Latin chroniclers of the twelfth century also show a 
familiarity with the works of Vergil, for they quote him 
frequently. And William of Malmesbury tells of the 
finding of the body of Pallas, whom Turnus killed, uncor- 
rupted after so many years, with an epitaph over it. The 
same marvelous story appears in the English Gesta Romano- 
rum, as a symbol of the immortality of the soul.^^ 

The chief interest of the chroniclers in Aeneas was in his 
relationship to Brutus, the eponymous founder of the 
race of the Britons. The whole of western Europe felt a 
sympathy for the Trojans on account of their supposed de- 

'^ William of Malmesbury, Hist, of the Kings of England, Bk. II, 
par. 206. Gest. Rom., translated from the Latin by Charles Swan, 
Tale CLVIII. For other stories in the Gest. Rom. connected with the 
name of Vergil, see Tales LVII, CVII, CLXXVI. 



THE MEDIAEVAL TRADITION 37 

scent from some individual of the race, and England was no 
exception. It was a common thing for histories of England 
to begin with the story of Aeneas and the coming of Brute 
to Albion, and for Layamon it was natural to call his poem 
the Brut, perhaps in imitation of the Aendd, for Brute 
stood in the same relation to the British as Aeneas did to the 
Romans. Geoffrey of Monmouth was the first to tell the 
stoiy after the confused account of Nennius, and he did it 
most fully. "After the Trojan War, Aeneas, fleeing from 
the desolation of the city, came with Ascanius by ship unto 
Italy. There, for that Aeneas was worshipfuUy received 
by King Latinus, Turnus, King of the Rutulians, did wax 
envious and made war against him. When they met in battle, 
Aeneas had the upper hand, and after that Turnus was slain, 
obtained the kingdom of Italy and Lavinia the daughter of 
Latinus." There follows the story of Brute, the great- 
grandson of Aeneas. It was prophesied before his birth 
that he should slay both his father and his mother. His 
mother died at his birth, and later, when hunting, he ac- 
cidentally shot and killed his father. In consequence he 
was banished, and fled to Greece. There he found the 
descendants of Helenus in bondage to the Greek king. 
He finally freed them and sailed away with them from 
Greece. His voyage was attended with many adventures, 
more or less reminiscent of the Aeneid, and he finally arrived 
at the island of Albion, of which he took possession and 
which he renamed Britain and at his death handed on to his 
son, Locrine.^^ It was this tradition of the founder of the 
race which Milton had in mind when he wrote. 

Virgin, daughter of Locrine, 
Sprung of old Anchises' line.''^ 

^ Geoffrey of Monmouth, Histories of the Kings of Britain, Bk. I. 
chaps. 3 ff. (Everyman's Library.) 
" Comus, 11. 922, 923. 



38 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

The chroniclers bring to a close the mediaeval period in 
Vergilian influence. For while the traditions of the Middle 
Ages were perpetuated in the succeeding centuries, with 
Chaucer comes the dawn of a new day in the knowledge . 
and understanding of the classics, a slight preUminary 
gleam of the later Renaissance. 



CHAPTER III 
CHAUCER, HIS CONTEMPORARIES AND HIS IMITATORS 

In his knowledge of Vergil and his treatment of Vergilian 
material, as in other things, Chaucer stood out from among 
the men of his century and even of the next. While his 
friend and contemporary Gower was telling at length the 
whole story of Vergil's magic mirror, Chaucer was merely 
referring to it in the Squieres Tale in a manner which might 
indicate that he discredited the legend. Wliile the Gawain 
poet was still associating Aeneas with the plot that caused 
the downfall of Troy, Chaucer was writing of the voyages 
of the Trojan and his adventures in Carthage, with a little 
prejudice and lack of proportion, it is true, but still with 
"Virgil Mantuan" and "Naso" as his "auctours." Not 
that Chaucer was untouched by the mediaeval tradition, 
for we shall see presently that the romanticizing tendency 
was a powerful factor in determining his treatment of the 
character and story of Aeneas. But he was writing with 
the Aeneid before him. 

Chaucer probably was familiar with the Georgics and 
Eclogues, although there is no conclusive evidence that he 
knew anything that Vergil wrote except the Aeneid. The 
motto on the Prioress' ''broche of gold," Amor vincit omnia, 
was probably a commonplace in Chaucer's time. The ap- 
parent quotations of the famous latet anguis in herba in the 
Somnours Tale and the Squieres Tale, might easily have 
come at second hand from the Roman de la Rose. Other 
possible allusions to any other work of Vergil except the 
Aeneid, may be similarly explained without the necessity of 

39 



40 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

assuming on Chaucer's part any knowledge of the Eclogues 
or the Georgics} Such an assumption, however, would be 
the simplest way to explain these references. To Gower 
was sent a poem by a certain philosopher, perhaps Strode, 
beginning, ''Eneidos Bucolicisque Georgica metra perhen- 
nis," and if Strode and Gower knew the Eclogues and Geor- 
gics, why not Chaucer? 

Prof. Kittredge says that it was probably in the period 
from 1373 to 1380 that Chaucer extended his Latin reading 
to include Vergil, "certainly in the decade following the 
writing of the Book of the Duchess in 1369." ^ This is true 
in spite of the fact that there are two allusions to the story 
of the Aeneid in the last mentioned poem. Lavinia, whose 
story was one of those pictured on the windows of the 
chamber in Chaucer's dream, might easily have become 
one of the stock figures in the love-vision type of poetry, 
in view of the prominent part she played in such a romance 
as the Eneas. She is mentioned again in the Balade in the 
Prologue to the Legend of Good Women. The reference to 

Dydo, quene eek of Cartage, 
That slow hir-self , for Eneas 
Was fals, 

undoubtedly may be explained as due to a knowledge of the 
Heroides, occurring as it does with allusions to other heroines 
celebrated by Ovid. The mention of Antenor, 

The traytour that betraysed Troye, 

whereas in the later poems it is always Sinon who is linked 
with Ganelon as a type of the arch-traitor, shows that at 
this time Chaucer was indebted to Dares or his imitators 

1 Of. T. & C. IV. 790 and Georg. 1. 38 and 4. 453-527. But we know 
that he was familiar with the story of Orpheus in Ovid, Met. 10. 1-85. 
* Chaucer and his Poetry, p. 28. 



CHAUCER, HIS CONTEMPORARIES AND HIS IMITATORS 41 

for the Troy story rather than to Vergil. We may assume 
then, that Chaucer's acquaintance with Vergil did not 
necessarily begin until after 1369, that he knew him well 
before writing the Hous of Fame, and that, as will be shown 
later, his knowledge grew more complete and accurate be- 
fore he incorporated the story of Dido in his Legend of Good 
Women. 

There are a number of references to the Aeneid scattered 
through the Canterbury Tales. It is interesting to note that 
in spite of the hold that the Dido episode had evidently 
taken on Chaucer's imagination, the only mention of her 
name outside of the two poems where her story is told at 
length, except for the passages where it occurs in the lists 
of stock heroines of romance, is in the Introduction to the 
Tale of the Man of Lawe, in the enumeration of the stories 
in Chaucer's own "Seintes Legende of Cupyde." The 
onslaught of Pyrrhus, the fall of Ilion, and the pathetic 
death of Priam are mentioned twice; the treachery of Sinon 
is cited as the parallel of the "sly iniquitee" of the col-fox, 

newe Scariot, newe Genilon! 

False dissimilour, O Greek Sinon, 

That broghtest Troye al outrely to sorwe! 

and the horse of brass in the Squieres Tale is twice compared 
with the "Grekes hors Synon." Turnus is twice alluded 
to, and the sixth book of the Aeneid is evidently in Chaucer's 
mind when he causes the Fiend to promise the Somnour 
full knowledge of the happenings in the other world, 

For thou shalt by thyn owene experience 
Conne in a chayer rede of this sentence 
Bet than Virgyle, whyl he was on lyve, 
Or Dant also.^ 

3 See C. T., B 289, 4548, 4418, F 209, 305-8, A 1945, B 197 fif., 
D 1519. 



42 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

While allusions to Vergil are plentiful, mere reminiscences, 
such as we find in abundance in later poets, are rare indeed. 
Prof. Skeat ingeniously explains the line in the Legend of 
Phyllis, with its introduction of a new water deity, 

And Thetis, Chorus, Triton, and they alle, 

as a confused recollection of the Vergilian passage, 

et senior Glauci chorus Inousque Palaemon 
Tritonesque citi Phorcique exercitus omnis; 
laeva tenent Thetis et Melite Panopeaque virgc* 

And in Troilus and Criseyde we find such Vergilian expres- 
sions as "a thousand shippes," and the lover's cry, "Goddess 
or woman." 

The first book of the Hous of Fame is almost entirely 
devoted to a summary of the Aeneid. As has been shown 
conclusively by Prof. Sypherd, the poem belongs to the 
love-vision type.^ It begins in the usual fashion with a 
discussion of dreams. This is followed by an invocation 
to the "god of slepe," after which comes the description of 
the dream itself. Chaucer fell asleep on the night of the 
tenth of December, and dreamed that he was in a temple 
of glass, which, by means of the representations of Venus, 
Cupid and Vulcan, he soon discovered to be dedicated to 
the Goddess of Love. On the walls of this temple were pic- 
tures illustrating the story of the Aeneid, with the emphasis 
strongly on the episode of Dido and Aeneas. "The sugges- 
tion of the temple of Love came from the love-visions," 
says Prof. Sypherd; "the story of Dido and Aeneas came 
probably from his favorite author, Vergil, but was enlarged 
by Chaucer himself in a manner consonant with the nature 
of a love-poem." ® But the source of the story, both here 

* Leg. of Good Women, VIII. 2422, Aen. 5. 823-5. 

^ Studies in Chaucer's Hous of Fame. * Op. cit. p. 19. 



CHAUCER, HIS CONTEMPORARIES AND HIS IMITATORS 43 

and in the Legend, is undoubtedly the Aeneid, although a 
few suggestions may be traced to Ovid, and some of the 
atmosphere and emphasis is due to the romances, perhaps 
to the Eneas itself. Had we any doubts about the source, 
the inscription on the wall of this temple must set them at 
rest. In these lines, a close translation of the first few lines 
of the Aeneid, may be felt at once the difference in tone be- 
tween the stately Roman poet and his fourteenth century 
admirer. 

I wol now singe, if that I can, 
The armes, and al-so the man, 
That first cam, through his destinee, 
Fugitif of Troye contree. 
In Itaile, with ful moche pyne, 
Unto the strondes of Lavyne. 

The idea of the paintings on the walls has been traced to 
many sources, more or less probable. If Chaucer had any 
mediaeval account in mind, it was probably a passage in 
Boccaccio's Amorosa Visione, where the walls were painted 
with legendary love-episodes, among them that of Dido 
and Aeneas. But the suggestion may have come directly 
from the Aeneid itself.'^ And the idea of wall-paintings was 
probably not foreign to Chaucer's personal experience, for 
there were many such to be seen, and the picturing of mytho- 
logical subjects on tapestries was common enough. 

For the sake of facilitating the discussion of the two 
treatments of the Vergilian material in the Hous of Fame 
and the Legend of Dido, the following table has been pre- 
pared, indicating the proportions of the two Chaucerian 
versions, and their relation to each other and to the Aeneid. 

^ Aen. 1. 446-493, 6. 20-33. 



44 



VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 



AENEID 

Bk. II, U. 13-558. 
Bk. II, II. 58S-804. 



Bk. III. 

Bk. I, U. 34^123, 124- 

156, Stilling of storm 

by Neptune. 



Bk. I, 11. 157-222, 305- 
410. 

Bk. I, II. 411-756. 



Bks. II-III. 
Bk. IV, II. 1-218. 



HOUS OP FAME BK. I 

151-161, Destruction 
of Troy. 

162-197, Flight of Ae- 
neas and loss of 
Creusa. 



LEGEND OF DIDO 



930-939. 



940-952. 



198-221, Adventures 953-962, "But of hia 
on the sea ; the storm ; aventures in the 

the stilling of the see 

tempest by Jupiter. Nis nat to pur- 

pos for to speke 
of here." 



222-238, Landing in 
Africa; meeting of 
Aeneas and Venus. 

239-268, Meeting and 
betrothal of Aeneas 
and Dido. 



Aeneas tells his story. 



Cf. U. 349-351, and Bk. 
Ill, U. 1368-1392. 



(269-292, Lamentation 
on the unfaithful- 
ness of man.) 



963-1003. 



1004-1253, Dido and 
Aeneas meet in 
Juno's temple; de- 
scription of her; 
the pictures in the 
temple; arrival of 
Ihoneus; appear- 
ance of Aeneas; 
Dido's reception of 
him; the feast; the 
gifts; arrival of 

Ascanius; Aeneas 
tells his story; 
Dido's love; her 
conversation with 
Anna; the hunt; 
the storm; the be- 
trothal; Fame car- 
ries the news to 
larbas. 
(1254-1284.) 



CHAUCER, HIS CONTEMPORARIES AND HIS IMITATORS 45 



HOUS OF FAME BK. I 

293-363, Aeneas plans 
to depart ; lament 
of Dido to herself. 



AENEID 

Bk. IV, 11. 279-295, 
296-392, Dido re- 
monstrates with 
Aeneas passionately: 
"Dissimulate etiam 
sperasti, perfide," 
etc. 504-521. 



Bk. IV, 11. 553-583, 364-378, Departure of 
584-705. Aeneas; death of 

Dido. 



(Appeal to author- 
ity of "Virgile in 
Eneidos.") 

(379-382, Dido's letter 
to Aeneas.) 

(383-426, Exempla to 
illustrate the un- 
faithfulness of man.) 

427-432, Mercury's 
message; the excuse 
of Aeneas. 

433-438, Aeneas' voy- 
age to Italy, and loss 
of his steersman. 



(Ovid, Heroides VII.) 



Bk. IV, 11. 265-278, 
553-570. 

Bk.V,ll. 1-11, 833-871. 



Bk. V. Funeral games 
for Anchises in Sicily. 

Bk. VI. 

Bks. VII-XII. 



439-450, Aeneas' visit 
to the Underworld. 

451-467, Arrival in 
Italy; treaty with 
Latinus; battles; 
death of Turnus; 
marriage with La- 
vinia; final triumph 
of Aeneas, "maugre 
Juno." 



LEGEND OP DIDO 

1285-1324, Aeneas 
plans to depart; 
Dido remonstrates 
with him gently 
and lovingly: "My 
dere herte, which 
that I love most." 
She sacrifices. 

1325-1351, Depar- 
ture of Aeneas; 
lament and death 
of Dido. 



(1352-1367, Dido's 
letter to Aeneas.) 



Cf. 1. 1331. 



46 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

A study of this table reveals at once one of the most 
interesting things in the handling of the story in the Hous 
of Fame, the proportion of the narrative. In this con- 
nection the Legend must be left out of consideration, for 
that is frankly concerned only with the Dido episode, and 
therefore Chaucer says truly. 

But of his aventures in the see 
Nis nat to purpos for to speke of here, 
For hit accordeth nat to my mater e. 
But, as I seide, of him and of Dido 
Shal be my tale, til that I have do. 

The pictures on the walls of the temple of Venus, however, 
are supposed to represent the whole story of the Aeneid. 
Book II of the Latin poem is summarized in forty-seven 
lines; Book III and about a hundred and fifty lines of 
Book I, in twenty-four. The remainder of Book I, which 
narrated the arrival of Aeneas in Africa and his reception 
at the court of Dido, occupies, in Chaucer's account, forty- 
seven lines. The events of Book IV occupy ninety-two lines 
of the Hous of Fame, but of these, sixty are devoted to the 
lament of Dido when she learns that Aeneas is about to 
depart. The fifth book of the Aeneid is allotted only six 
lines in all; the sixth fares somewhat better with twelve; 
and the last six books are disposed of in seventeen!, Thus 
the emphasis rests heavily on the Carthaginian episode, a 
mere episode in the Latin poem, but the main portion of the 
story in the Enghsh version. But it must be remembered 
that this is a love-vision, and that the Aeneid, therefore, 
has become, as Prof. Kittredge says, the epic, not of Rome, 
but of Venus. ^ The elaboration of the sentimental part 
of the story, especially the long account of Dido's "com- 
pleynt," is in full harmony with the mediaeval romantic 

^ Chaucer and his Poetry, p. 78. 



CHAUCER, HIS CONTEMPORARIES AND HIS IMITATORS 47 

tendency shown previously in the Eneas, and subsequently 
in the Eneydos of Caxton. The poem was intended to be 
read by those interested in stories of courtly love, and there- 
fore must conform as much as possible to the romantic 
convention. The whole attitude of Chaucer toward the 
subject is indicated in the lines with which he closes the 
narrative of the adventures of the son of the Goddess of 
Love: 

How, maugre Juno, Eneas 

For al hir sleighte and hir compas, 

Acheved al his aventure; 

For Jupiter took of him cure 

At the preyere of Venus, 

The whiche I preye alway save us, 

And us ay of our sorwes lighte! 

The omissions in and additions to the narrative are also 
characteristically romantic. Who in a courtly audience 
would have been interested in the funeral games of Anchises? 
Chaucer omits them entirely, without even a word of men- 
tion. Had he been wilhng to turn them into a tourna- 
ment, with knights in action and fair ladies looking on, 
doubtless he would have won applause. But boxing and 
wrestling might well be thought to have no place in a love- 
poem. This is the only important portion of the Aeneid 
which is omitted entirely, although necessarily in the abridged 
form in which the story here appears, many of the individual 
incidents are passed over in silence, both in the Hous of 
Fame and in the Legend. It is interesting to see that the 
omission in the earlier poem of the details in the meeting of 
Aeneas and Dido and the events which followed his recital 
of his adventures, is not paralleled in the later one, where 
they are given elaborately and accurately. 

Although Chaucer does omit these details in the Hous of 
Fame, in the same poem he cannot refrain from reporting 



48 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

in true mediaeval fashion the "compleynt" of Dido on 
finding herself forsaken. This is given largely on his own 
authority, as he himseK says, — 

Non other auctor alegge I — 

although he does take some hints from Vergil, especially 
in the lines, 

"0, that your love, ne your bonde, 
That ye han sworn with your right honde, 
Ne my cruel deeth," quod she, 

"May holde yow still heer with me!" 

which are an almost literal translation of the verses, 

nee te noster amor nee te data dextera quondam 
nee moritura tenet crudeli funere Dido? 

(Aen. 4. 307-8) 

A still more characteristically mediaeval addition, which 
has its counterpart also in the Legend, is the long dissertation, 
with two proverbs as text and commentary, on the un- 
trust worthiness and falseness of man, reinforced as it is 
later in the poem by a series of exempla, the stories of such 
deceived and deserted women as Oenone, Medea, Deianira, 
and ''Adriane." 

Changes in the spelling of proper names, such as that 
of the last heroine mentioned above, are common. In 
the Hous of Fame, the Italian bride of Aeneas is called Lavyna, 
and in the Legend, Dido's first husband is named Sitheo. 
An actual mistake is found in the Hous of Fame, in the 
separation of Ascanius and lulus into two different persons: 

And hir yonge sone lulo 
And eek Ascanius also. 

The explanation is not difficult.^ Such a misinterpretation 

is not remarkable in the Middle Ages. "Ilioun" is not 

• See Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer, Vol. II. p. 386. 



CHAUCER, HIS CONTEMPORARIES AND HIS IMITATORS 49 

thought of as the same as Troy, but is regarded as the citadel, 
the " castel " of the town. An example of the reverse process, 
whereby two persons are welded into one, is to be found 
in the "Brutus Cassius," who, according to Chaucer's 
Monk, "maad conspiracy e" against Julius Caesar. Another 
slight error, or perhaps we might call it a picturesque ad- 
dition on Chaucer's part, occurs in the same passage. He 
says that Creusa was lost "in a forest," but there is nothing 
in the avia of the Latin to necessitate such an interpretation. 
Three other mistakes in this same poem indicate that 
Chaucer was not yet thoroughly at home with his original. 
In relating the events connected with the stilling of the 
storm off the coast of Carthage, he confuses the order of 
the incidents. He says that there was a picture repre- 
senting Venus imploring Jupiter to save Aeneas' fleet, 
and that he saw 

Joves Venus kisse 
And graunted of the tempest lisse. 

But in Vergil, the quieting of the storm is due to Neptune, 
and after her son has landed on the African shore, Venus, 
motivated by her fear for his safety in Carthage, appeals to 
Jupiter for his aid. Again, when Aeneas and Achates met 
Venus in the forest in disguise, Chaucer tells us that 

Eneas gan him pleyne, 
Whan that he knew her, of his peyne, 

but as Vergil tells the story, Aeneas did not recognize his 
mother until after his conversation with her, when vera 
incessu patuit dea. By omitting entirely the funeral games 
of Anchises, Chaucer naturally brings together the storm 
at the beginning of the fifth Aeneid and the loss of Palinurus 
at the end. 

The Legend of Dido shows a marked improvement in 
the matter of accuracy in following the original. None of 



50 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

the mistakes in the Hous of Fame is repeated here. Indeed 
the only error which may be regarded as a real misunder- 
standing of the Latin, is the misreading of leti as laeiitiae in 

this was the firste morwe 
Of her gladnesse, and ginning of her sorwe. 

There is in these two poems a radical change from the 
Vergilian conception of the characters of Aeneas and Dido. 
The former is no longer the Fate-driven hero, the destined 
founder of the mighty Roman race, obeying the commands 
of the gods rather than his own inclinations {Italiam non 
sponte sequor), but the "fals lover," the "traitour;" nor is 
Dido the passionate woman, swept by the force of her 
emotions into disregard of her solemn oaths of loyalty to 
her first husband, but one of the faithful, much-abused 
"saints of Cupid." The vision of his father and the visit 
of Mercury to Aeneas with the commands of Jove, are mere 
excuses on the lips of the faithless lover, and 

Ther-with his false teres out they sterte; 

for although this is what "the book seyth" in order "to 
excusen Eneas," the real reason for his departure is that 

This Eneas, that hath so depe y-swore, 
Is wery of his craft within a throwe; 
The hote ernest is al over-blowe. 

The new conception is most marked in the Legend, where 
the narrative, however, follows more faithfully and accurately 
the Latin original, and is far more detailed. This new 
Dido is a typical heroine of romance, a "fresshe lady," 

So yong, so lusty, with her eyen glade, 
That if that god that heven and erthe made, 
Wolde han a love, for beaute and goodnesse. 
And womanhod, and trouthe, and seemlinesse. 
Whom should he loven but this lady swete? 



CHAUCER, HIS CONTEMPORARIES AND HIS IMITATORS 51 

She is also 

holde of alle quenes flour, 
Of gentilesse, of freedom, of beaute. 

How different is this woman from her whom Vergil compares 
to Diana upon the banks of the Eurotas and on the heights of 
Cynthus, followed by her thousand Oreads. The new 
Dido looked upon a new Aeneas, 

And saw the man, that he was lyk a knight. 
And suffisaunt of persone and of might. 
And lyk to been a veray gentil man. 

With the evident purpose of blackening the crime of the 
traitor, Chaucer loses no opportunity of emphasizing the 
beauty and goodness of Dido. The "meynee" of Aeneas 
that he thought was lost, came, not because they were brought 
as prisoners, but 

for to seke 
The quene, and of her socour her beseke; 
Swich renoun was ther spronge of her goodnesse. 

The description of the gifts which Dido gave Aeneas serves 
the same purpose of heightening the iniquity of one who 
could presume to desert so noble and generous a woman. 

The conversation of Dido and her sister Anne brings out 
in strong relief the main points of the mediaeval, romantic 
aspects of Chaucer's treatment of the story. The inter- 
view takes place on a moonht night, not when 

postera Phoebea lustrabat lampade terras 
umentemque Aurora polo dimoverat umbram. 

{Aen. 4. 6-7) 

The role of Anna is changed from that of the sister who asked 
pladtone etiam pugnatis amorif to that of one who "som-del 



52 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

withstood" the queen's passion.^" Dido's simple statement 
of her love and heart's desire, 

I wolde fain to him y-wedded be, 

offers a striking contrast to the violent struggles of the Ver- 
gilian Elissa: 

si mihi non animo fixum imraotumque sederet 
ne cui me vinclo vellem sociare iugali, . . . 
huic uni forsan potui succumbere culpae. . . . 
sed mihi vel tellus optem prius ima dehiscat 
vel pater omnipotens abigat me fulmine ad umbras, 
pallentis umbras Erebo noctemque profundam, 
ante pudor, quam te violo aut tua iura resolvo. 

{Aen. 4. 15 £f) 

In marked contrast to this omission of all reference to Dido's 
violation of her oath is the emphasis which Chaucer lays 
on the vows of loyalty which Aeneas swore. Nor are the 
gentle words of the queen when she has discovered that 
Aeneas intends to leave her, and 

She asketh him anoon, what him mislyketh — 
"My dere herte, which that I love most?" 

much like the passionate cry of the angry woman, 

dissimulare etiam sperasti, perfide, tantum 
posse nefas tacitusque mea decedere terra? 

{Aen. 4. 305-6) 

It is a descent from the heights of passionate tragedy to the 

levels of sentimental romance. 
As the author of the Eneas is inclined to discount the inter- 
im But cf. Hoiis of Fame, where Chaucer has preserved a natural 

touch in making Dido say to Anna, "that she the cause was / That she 

first louede Eneas," which is the Vergihan "tu lacrimis evicta meis," 

etc. (Aen. 4. 548-9.) 



CHAUCER, HIS CONTEMPORARIES AND HIS IMITATORS 53 

vention of the gods, and explain everything as due to human 
means, so Chaucer too shows the rationalizing spirit. This 
is less evident in the Hous of Fame than in the Legend, al- 
though in the former poem in the account of the death of 
Palinurus no mention is made of the God of Sleep, who, 
in the Vergilian narrative, is responsible for his faU. Chaucer 
merely says that he saw a picture which showed 

how he loste his steresman, 
Which that the stere, or he took keep, 
Smot over-bord, lo! as he sleep. 

In the later poem, on the other hand, the tendency is strongly 
marked. Chaucer cannot understand exactly how it was 
that when Eneas came to the temple of Juno, 

Full prively his wey than hath he nome, 

and yet he cannot quite bring himself to believe the ex- 
planation that Vergil offers: 

I cannot seyn if that hit be possible, 
But Venus hadde him maked invisible — 
Thus seith the book, with-outen any lees. 

The part which the gods, Venus, Jupiter, and Mercury as 
their messenger, play in securing a welcome for the Trojans 
in Carthage, is entirely omitted, and Chaucer is even dis- 
posed to doubt that Cupid had anything to do — in person 
— with Dido's passion. He lays the grounds of her love 
in the pity that she felt for this "disherited" stranger. 

But natheles, our autor telleth us 
That Cupido, that is the god of love, 
At preyere of his moder, hye above, 
Hadde the lyknes of the child y-take, 
This noble quene enamoured to make 
On Eneas; but, as of that scripture, 
Be as be may, I make of hit no cure. 



54 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

Perhaps this is due to Chaucer's desire to lay all the blame 
for Dido's despair and death on his mortal hero, or perhaps 
to the rationalizing tendency of the time and the unwilling- 
ness to beheve in any pagan deity but the goddess Fortune. 
While Vergil was the main source of Chaucer's version of 
the story, a few touches in the narrative, such as Dido's 
plea, "Let me with yow ryde," are due to Ovid." Perhaps 
something of the romantic attitude is a reflection of the 
sentimentality of Ovid as well as of the spirit of the times. 
Gower's treatment of the episode is based on Ovid's Heroides. 
In the Hous of Fame, Chaucer refers to the 

Epistle of Ovyde, 
What that she wrot or that she dyde, 



and adds, 



And nere hit to long to endyte, 
By god, I wolde hit here wryte. 



In the Legend he states at the outset that he intends to 
"take the tenour" both from the "Eneid" and from "Naso." 
And at the close of the poem, Ovid is referred to as "myn 
autour," and the first eight lines of the epistle Dido Aeneae 
are translated. 

The influence of Vergil on the Hous of Fame is not bounded 
by the walls of the temple of Venus. Possibly the compari- 
son of the desert in which Chaucer found himself when he 
came "out at the dores," with that of "Libye," was sug- 
gested by the previous story whose scene was laid on the 
African coast. There is an allusion too to Turnus and his 
vision of Iris, to the trumpeter Misenus 

Of whom that speketh Virgilius, 

and to "Eolus, the god of winde," and his "cave of stoon." '^^ 

" Her. 7. 79. 

" Chaucer locates the cave in Thrace. The adjective Thracian 
has been appUed to Boreas in particular and the winds in general by 



CHAUCER, HIS CONTEMPORARIES AND HIS IMITATORS 55 

Some have suggested that the name "Ballenus" is an error 
for "Helenus," for he too was a seer, and the most obvious 
explanation of the name of the piper Atiteris is that it is 
merely a corruption of Vergil's Tityrus, a name which had 
by this time become stereotyped for a shepherd. 

The most important suggestion that Chaucer derived 
from Vergil for his Hous of Fame aside from the story of the 
Aeneid in Book I, is the description of the appearance of 
Lady Fame herself. The details in regard to her house 
came from Ovid; ^^ the conception of the nature and func- 
tions of Fame is neither classical nor mediaeval. To Vergil 
as to other classical writers, she was a mere bearer of tidings, 
usually ill-tidings, a dea foeda, a conception which was cur- 
rent in the Middle Ages as well. The Latin word fama 
means "rumor" rather than "fame" which has the power 
to determine men's reputations, as Chaucer represents the 
goddess." The conditions in the house of twigs have more 
resemblance to the idea of Fame as Rumor, and the descrip- 
tion of the struggle between 

A lesing and a sad soth-sawe 

was probably suggested by Vergil's characterization of Fame 
as 

tarn ficti pravique tenax quam nuntia veri. 

(Aen. 4. 188) '' 

But the account of the appearance of the goddess herself 

the classical writers. See Ovid, Ars Am. 2. 382; Verg. Aen. 12.365; 
App. Rhod., Arg. 1. 953-954; 2. 427; Val. Flac, Arg. 1. 596-610; 
Callim., Hym. in Del. 26. 

" Met. 12. 39-63. 

^* Perhaps he got some of the characteristics, such as her capri- 
ciousness, the suppliants for her favor, etc., from Boethius' descrip- 
tion of Fortune whom he associates with Fame. 

" But cf. Ovid, Met. 12. 54-55. 



56 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

was undoubtedly due to the lines in the Aeneid, £ts a com- 
parison of the two passages will show. When Chaucer en- 
tered the hall of Fame, he saw 

A feminyne creature; 

That never formed by nature 

Nas swich another thing y-seye, 

For alther first, soth for to saye. 

Me thoughte that she was so lyte. 

That the lengthe of a cubyte 

Was lenger than she semed be; 

But thus sone, in a whyle, she 

Hir tho so wonderliche streighte. 

That with hir feet she th'erthe reighte, 

And with liir heed she touched hevene, 

Ther as shynen sterres sevene. 

And there-to eek, as to my wit, 

I saugh a gretter wonder yit. 

Upon hir eyen to beholde; 

But certeyn I hem never tolde; 

For as fele eyen hadde she 

As fetheres upon foules be, 

Or weren on the bestes foure. 

That goddes trone gunne honoure, 

As John writ in th'apocahps. 

Hir heer, that oundy was and crips. 

As burned gold hit shoon to see. 

And soth to tellen, also she 

Had also fele up-stonding eres 

And tonges, as on bestes heres; 

And on hir feet wexen saugh I 

Partriches winges redely. 

With the addition of a few Biblical details, this corresponds 
closely to the Vergilian account: 

extemplo Libyae magnas it Fama per urbes, 
Fama, malum qua non aUud velocius ullum : 



CHAUCER, HIS CONTEMPORARIES AND HIS IMITATORS 57 

mobilitate viget virisque adquirit eundo, 

parva metu primo, mox sese attoUit in auras 

ingrediturque solo et caput inter nubila condit. 

illam Terra parens ira inritata deorum 

extremam, ut perliibent, Coeo Enceladoque sororem 

progenuit pedibus celerem et pernicibus aids, 

monstrum horrendum, ingens, cui quot sunt corpore plumae, 

tot vigiles oculi subter (inirabile dictu) 

tot linguae, totidem ora sonant, tot subrigit auris. 

Chaucer evidently misread perdicibus for pernicibus, and 
so transformed the "swift wings" of Fama into "partriches 
winges." The expression is rendered correctly in Troilus 
and Criseyde, where he uses this same description : 

The swifte Fame, whiche that false thinges 

Egal reporteth lyk the thinges trewe. 

Was through-out Troye y-fled with preste winges. 

On one of the pillars in the House of Fame stood Vergil. 
He was not, however, with that group of writers, Omeer, 
Dares, Tytus, Guido, Gaufride, and "eek he, Lollius," 
who were "besy for to here up Troye." His fame rests, 
upon another basis. 

Ther saugh I stonde on a pileer 
That was of tinned yren cleer, 
That Latin poete, dan Virgyle, 
That bore hath up a longe whyle 
The fame of Pius Eneas. 

"Homer's iron is admirably represented," says a note in 
Bell's Chaucer, "as having been by Virgil covered over with 
tin." Succeeding editors have repeated this, and inter- ^^ 
preted it to mean that the Aeneid is simply the Iliad with a 
thin veneer of polish and brilliance. But it seems scarcely 
credible that one who admired Vergil as Chaucer evidently 



58 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

did, would make a criticism so mifavorable to the poet 
who heads the list of those worthy of all reverence by his 
"litel book" of Troilus and Criseyde. Such subtle criticism 
would be a little too modern for Chaucer, too, and besides, 
"Omeer" was not in as high repute in the Middle Ages as 
"Virgyle." The explanation must be sought elsewhere, I 
think, and most naturally in some such significance for tin 
as that which iron has in its association in alchemy with the 
planet Mars. The other metals spoken of in this passage 
have some such meaning, and it is much more reasonable 
to assign to the use of tin a ''scientific" rather than a literary 
significance. Josephus stands on a pillar of iron and lead, 
the metals of Mars and Saturn, because he tells of wars 
and of dire events such as the influence of Saturn was sup- 
posed to cause. Statins, Lucan, and Homer and the other 
writers on the story of Troy stand on iron pillars, for their 
poems tell of the deeds of Mars. Ovid's column is of copper, 
the metal of Venus, for he was to the Middle Ages pre- 
eminently the poet of love, and Claudian, who wrote of the 
Underworld, appropriately stands on a pillar of sulphur. 
In alchemy, tin has the same sign as the planet Jupiter,^^ 
and in the Booke of Quinte Essence, there is a direction in- 
volving the use of a "plate of venus or lubiter," that is, of 
copper or tin. While the Aeneid is truly a record of strife, 
so that it is fitting that its author should stand on a pillar 
of Mars' metal, its hero, the "Pius Eneas," is lovis de gente 
suprema, and any one familiar with the story must have 
observed not only that Jupiter's name is mentioned more 
frequently than that of any of the other gods, but that 
his control is constant, and that the deeds of Mars are in 
almost every instance directed by the will and power of 
the pater omnipoiens. Throughout the poem the imperia 

•1* See New English Dictionary, article on tin, and Skeat, Works of 
Chaucer, Note on C. T., G 820. 



CHAUCER, HIS CONTEMPORARIES AND HIS IMITATORS 59 

lovis are supreme; the divum pater aique hominum rex 
bows only to the Fates." I, therefore, should emend Bell's 
note to read, "Mars'nron is admirably represented as having 
been by Vergil covered over with the tin of Jupiter." 

Gower's story of the magic mirror has already been com- 
mented on. He also showed his acquaintance with that 
class of legends which associated Vergil with women, most 
of them not very complimentary to the poet. In the eighth 
book of the Confessio Amantis, Elde comes into the presence 
of Venus accompanied by David, Solomon, Samson, Vergil, 
and Ovid, all old men who had been servants to love. 

And ek Virgile of aquaintance 
I sih, wher he the maiden preide, 
Which was the doghter, as men seide. 
Of themperour whilom of Rome. 

He was probably thinking here of the story, told in detail 
by Stephen Hawes,^' of how Vergil was once placed in an 
awkward position by the emperor's daughter with whom 
he was carrying on a flirtation. She had promised to draw 
him up to her window in a basket, but when she got him 
halfway up, left him swinging in the air, to be the laughing- 
stock of the whole city. In revenge he, by his magic powers, 
put out all the fires in Rome. One version, however, tells 
how Vergil outwitted the princess, for, having learned be- 
forehand of her intentions, he caused one of his familiar spirits 
to take his place in the basket, and the fiend was perfectly 
capable of extricating himself from the predicament. 

These two stories show how far Gower was from Chaucer 
in any real sympathy with the author of the Aeneid. For 
the Vergilian element in his poetry is practically included 

" Secilen. 2. 326, 689; 1. 257-296; 4. 198-278, 331, 614; 5. 687-699, 
726, 747; 9. 77-122, 128-9, 630-1, 801-5; 10. 606-27; 12. 565, 791-842, 
895. ^^ Pastime of Pleasure, chap. XXIX. 



60 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

within their limits. He does tell the story of Aeneas and 
Dido,^' but he owes it almost entirely to Ovid, for the passage 
is chiefly concerned with the letter written by the deserted 
queen. No one could deny that he knew the Aeneid, but it 
is clear that Ovid was his favorite author. He refers to the 
war with Turnus, but this is also probably from Ovid rather 
than from Vergil, the marginal summary being a virtual 
translation of a few lines in the Metamorphoses.^'^ In his 
Latin poetry, too, there are innumerable Ovidian echoes, 
whereas definite Vergilian influence is practically lacking. 
Chaucer's contemporaries, however, were not so ignorant 
of Vergil as to be unable to use him as a standard, for Hoc- 
cleve, in his Regiment of Princes, in the famous address to 
Chaucer, after comparing him to Cicero in "rhethorik," 
and to Aristotle in "philosophic," says, 

the steps of Virgile in poesie 
Thow filwedest eeke. 

Another phase of the mediaeval tradition still surviving 
in the fourteenth century, is to be found in the opening sen- 
tences of Gawain and the Greene Knight. "After the siege 
and the assault of Troy, when that burg was destroyed and 
burnt to ashes, and the traitor tried for his treason, the 
noble Aeneas and his kin sailed forth to become princes 
and patrons of well-nigh all the Western Isles." ^^ Here is 
evident that inconsistency in the character of Aeneas that 
is found in the Middle Ages. According to the accounts of 

" Conf. Am. 4. 5. =" Met. 14. 449-451. 

^ Sil)en \>e sege and \)e assaut wat3 sesed at Troye, 
Pe bor3 brittened and brent to bronde3 and aske3, 
Pe tulk l)at \)e trammes of tresoun l>er wro3t, 
Wat3 tried for his tricherie, \>e trewest on erthe; 
Hit wat3 Ennias Jje athel, and his highe kinde, 
Pat 8il)en depreced prouinces, and patrounes become 
Welne3e of al l)e wele in \>e west iles. 



CHAUCER, HIS CONTEMPORARIES AND HIS IMITATORS 61 

Dares and Dictys, of Benoit and Guido, and of Joseph of 
Exeter, who constituted the mediaeval authorities for the 
story of the fall of Troy, Antenor and Aeneas were respon- 
sible for the plot that caused the destruction of the city. 
On the other hand, Aeneas was the founder of the Roman 
nation, and so indirectly of nearly all the other nations of 
Europe, and such a blot on his fame as complicity in the 
plot for the overthrow of Troy, was a difficult stain to 
eradicate. Hence many authors glossed over or disregarded 
entirely his part in the transaction, Antenor became the 
arch-traitor, 

The tulk that the trammes of tresoun ther wroht, 

and the subsequent adventures of Aeneas were stressed, as 
they are in these lines of Gawain and the Greene Knight. 

The conflict was carried on into the fifteenth century.'' 
Lydgate's Troy Book, one of a long series of versions of the 
mediaeval Troy story, is professedly based on the Latin 
prose narrative of Guido delle Colonne, and accordingly tells 
at length of the plot of Antenor and Aeneas. There follows 
a passage of nearly thirty lines, in which Lydgate summa- 
rizes the story of the Aeneid, with the conclusion, 

Ye may al seen, by ful sovereyn style 
From point to point compiled in Virgile, 
Written and made sithen go ful yore; 
For Troie boke speketh of hym no more.*' 

This is obviously an attempt to reconcile the two narratives 
by the expedient of calling Vergil's account a mere continua- 
tion of Guido's. The difficulty here, however, is not insur- 

" And even into the sixteenth. See WilHam Warner, Albion's 
England, chap. XIII, and Addition in Proese to the Second Booke. 
Dante too had been distressed by the fact that Julius Caesar, founder 
of the Empire, had driven Cato into exile. See, e.g., Conv. iii. 5. 

« Troy Book, 4. 1434 ff. 



62 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

mountable, for Lydgate bestows no word of praise upon 
Aeneas, not even the one word "noble," like the Gawain 
poet, but with inherited romantic sympathy with Dido, 
calls him the man that "falsede . . . Dido, of womman- 
hede flour." 

Lydgate's Fall of Princes was a translation of Boccaccio's 
popular book, De Casibus Virorum Illustrium, so that the 
Monk of Bury cannot be held responsible for anything that 
occurs there. It is interesting to note, however, that the 
story of the Salvatio Romae, told in connection with the 
Pantheon at Rome, and without mention of Vergil, finds 
a place in "Bochas," and that here too is that curious alter- 
native version of the death of Dido, which is told in Caxton's 
Eneydos. 

Caxton's book is one of his numerous translations from 
the French, and was printed at Westminster in 1490. His 
original was probably the Livre des Eneydes, printed at Lyons 
by Guillaume le Roy in 1483. It has no title-page, but the 
colophon runs as follows: "Here fynyssheth the boke of 
Eneydos, compyled by Vyrgyle, whiche hathe be translated 
oute of latyne in to frenshe. And oute of frenshe reduced in to 
Englysshe by me Wyllm Caxton." The French, however, 
was far from a translation of the Aeneid, though most of the 
incidents and much of the language are based directly on 
the Latin. But as was the case in the Romans d^Eneas, 
the writer treated his original with the utmost freedom, and 
expanded, abridged, added, omitted, and changed the 
order of events at will. The story begins, in the true mediae- 
val fashion, at the beginning. After telling of the building 
of Troy by Priam, who in all other versions was the last king 
of that city, but here is represented as the original founder, 
it proceeds to the story of Polydorus' death and burial. 
Omitting all mention of Sinon, the wooden horse, Laocoon, 
and the loss of Creusa, it tells of the departure of Aeneas, 



CHAUCER, HIS CONTEMPORARIES AND HIS IMITATORS 63 

and of his adventures up to the time of the storm. Then 
the author relates Boccaccio's story of Dido, marveling that 
he did not follow the version of Vergil. "I was abasshed," 
he says, ''and had grete merveylle how bochace, whiche 
is an auctour so gretly renommed, hath transposed, or atte 
leste dyversifyed, the falle and caas otherwyse than vyrgyle 
hath in his fourth booke of Eneydos, ... I have enter- 
prysed fyrste and to-fore, for better, and to understande 
the mater, I have purposed to recyte here the caas and falle 
after the oppynyon of lohn bocace." Up to the founding 
of the city of Carthage, the two accounts are very similar. 
But Dido's death, according to Boccaccio, had nothing to 
do with Aeneas. She was wooed by a powerful neighboring 
king, but, still true to her first husband, she did not wish 
to marry him. He uttered such dire threats against the 
state, however, that her subjects were made desperate. 
By misrepresenting the situation to her, so that she thought 
that a neighboring king wished one of her men to come to 
his court, they drew from her the statement that everyone 
should be willing to sacrifice himself for his country. Then 
they told her the true state of affairs, and she, in distress, 
asked for three months to consider the proposal. At the 
end of this time, still unwilling to marry, but dreading to 
bring upon her people the consequences of a refusal, she 
built a huge pyre in the midst of the city on pretense of 
making a sacrifice, and slew herself thereon, in the presence 
of her subjects.^^ After this version of the story, the French 

^ See Justin, Historiae, Bk. xviii, chaps. 4, 5, 6. Cf. Jerome, 
Adv. Jov. I. 43 and Ausonius, Ep. 118. 7. Turbervile translated this 
Epigram under the title Of Dido and the Truth of her Death. See also 
Warner, Addition in Proese to the Second Booke of Albion's England. 
According to all historians, Dido and Aeneas could not have been 
contemporaries, and the critics have at various times expended much 
labor in defending Vergil's anachronism. Boccaccio's account there- 
fore is more likely to be historically correct than Vergil's. 



64 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

translator puts the account given by Vergil, following his 
original fairly closely in the general outlines, but diverging 
in some details and expanding enormously, thus naturally 
detracting from the forcefulness and dignity of the Latin. 
The story up through the death of Dido occupies over two 
thirds of the entire narrative. 

The funeral games in the fifth book of the Aeneid are 
assigned only a few lines in the Eneydos. The incident of 
the burning of the ships is told at length, and the mention 
of the temple of Apollo in the beginning of the sixth book of 
Vergil is the starting-point for a long digression on the 
stories of Daedalus and Minos of Crete. The descent to 
Avernus, however, is disposed of in a few words of disbelief 
and disapproval. "There dwelled the goddesse Cryspyne,^^ 
whiche shulde have brought eneas in-to helle, . . . but this 
mater I leve, for it is fayned, and not to be bylevyd. who 
that will knowe how eneas wente to helle, late hym rede 
virgyle, claudyan, or the pistelles of Ovyde, & there he shall 
fynde more than trouthe. For whiche cause I leve it and 
wryte not of it." With this it is interesting to compare 
Chaucer's omission of the bulk of the fifth and sixth books, 
and his unwillingness to admit the truth of any of the super- 
natural events. The writer of the Eneydos consistently 
omits all such elements in the last six books, which he 
otherwise follows as closely as may be expected. There is 
no mention of the activities of Juno or AUecto, of the chang- 
ing of the ships into sea-nymphs, or of the marvelous armor 
which was the gift of Venus to her son. The spectral 
image of Aeneas, which lured Turnus on board one of the 
ships, is attributed, not to Juno, but to the Fiend 1^^ After 

*"• The French has here "crespie," which might mean "wrinkled," 
referring to Vergil's longaeva sacerdos. Caxton evidently thought it 
was the name of the Sibyl. 

'' Cf. the treatment of the supernatural events in the Pharsalia in 
the mediaeval hves of Caesar. 



CHAUCER, HIS CONTEMPORARIES AND HIS IMITATORS 65 

the death of Turnus, which closes the Aeneid, the author 
of the Eneydes, inspired by the same desire for complete- 
ness which animated Maphaeus Vegius, gives in three addi- 
tional chapters, the subsequent history of Aeneas and Lavinia, 
and a list of the Alban kings. 

This analysis of the Eneydos has been given, partly for 
comparison with Chaucer, a century earlier, and partly to 
show the enormous strides forward which were taken by 
Gavin Douglas, Caxton's arch-critic, twenty-five years 
later. This book, the first version of the Aeneid in Eng- 
land in the vernacular, seems separated by far more than a 
quarter of a century from Douglas' Virgil, the first real 
translation of the Roman epic in the English tongue. It 
was the revival of classical learning under the humanists 
which wrought this great change in the attitude toward 
Vergil. 



CHAPTER IV 
VERGIL AND HUMANISM 

In general, the humanistic revival of the sixteenth cen- 
tury brought into English literature a closer adherence to 
fact in its treatment of the classics. The distortions and 
mistaken emphasis of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries 
are much less marked in the sixteenth. Although Sidney be- 
lieved that the Aeneas of Dares Phrygius was the "right 
Aeneas," and that of Vergil the "feigned," he felt that the 
Aeneid should be read, and that it could be read with profit. 
He himself gave evidence of a ready familiarity with the 
classics, including Vergil, by allusions and quotations, the 
very inaccuracy of some of which indicates that he is quot- 
ing from a well-stored memory. The constant presence of 
quotations and echoes in Ehzabethan prose and poetry is 
an answer to his query, "Who is it that ever was a scholar 
that doth not carry away some verses of Virgil, Horace, or 
Cato, which in his youth he learned, and even to his old 
age serve him for hourly lessons?" 

For this familiar use of Latin and Greek was based upon 
the new classical education of the humanists. Radical 
changes had been made in material and method from the 
schools of the Middle Ages, and in order to understand thor- 
oughly the entrance of this new material into the literature 
of the Renaissance, it is necessary to consider first the 
new cultural background made possible by the schools and 
colleges of sixteenth century England, in contrast with that 
created by the work in the mediaeval Universities, and then 
to examine the literature itself. 

The controversy over the relative merits of the Ancients 

66 



r 



VERGIL AND HUMANISM 67 

and the Moderns is not a thing of modern growth. It is 
far older than the time of Swift. A thirteenth century battle 
of the books was waged on the pages of Henri d'Andeli's 
Battle of the Seven Arts, in which the forces of Grammar from 
Orleans, among whom Vergil bore a lance in company with 
other classics, were routed by the army of Logic, aided by 
Civil and Canon Law, the ''New Aristotle" being a promi- 
nent warrior on their side. And this battle and its outcome 
are typical of the educational situation in the Middle Ages. 
Chartres was the main stronghold of classical culture on 
the continent in the twelfth century, Orleans in the early 
part of the thirteenth, but they could not hold their own 
against Paris and Bologna. John of Salisbury, that power- 
ful advocate and preeminent example of the value of a 
classical training, tells in the Metalogicus of his education 
at Chartres under the instruction of Bernard, but the time 
soon came when, as Rashdall says, ''Aristotle was accepted 
as a well-nigh final authority. . . . The awakened intellect 
of Europe busied itself with expounding, analyzing and 
debating the new treasures unfolded before its eyes, and 
the Classics dropped again, for the mass of students whose 
reading was bounded by the prescribed curriculum of the 
Universities, into the obscurity from which they had for 
a brief period emerged. . . . For the attainment of the 
Mastership in the Liberal Arts, Logic and Philosophy were 
the essential requisites: and at that early period in the 
history of the examination system it was soon found that the 
establishment of a prescribed curriculum of studies and 
the offer of a premium to those who pursue it is fatal to all 
subjects excluded therefrom." ^ And Vergil, along with 

1 Hastings Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, 
Oxford, 1895. Vol. I, pp. 68, 69. The exclusion of Aristotle here and 
elsewhere from the company of the " Classics," means simply that his 
works were studied, not as literature, but as textbooks in Logic and 
Philosophy. 



^ 



68 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISfl POETS 

other Roman writers, was so excluded. John Garland, 
master of Grammar at Paris in the first half of the thir- 
teenth century, voiced the last plea for the restoration of 
classical studies at his University. His, however, was a 
solitary voice. "The comparison," says Rashdall, "of 
John of Salisbury's account of his education in the first half 
of the twelfth century with the earliest University Statute 
at the beginning of the next century, enables us to trace 
the startling rapidity of this decline in hterary culture. 
Grammar is prescribed as one of the subjects of the Examina- 
tion, but Grammar is represented solely by the works of 
Priscian and Donatus. Rhetoric receives hardly more than 
a comphmentary recognition: the Classics are not taken 
up at all. The student's whole attention is concentrated 
upon Logic and Aristotle. Boys in Grammar Schools might 
still learn their Grammar by construing Ovid or 'Cato,' 
but henceforth the poets, the historians, the orators of 
ancient Rome were considered unworthy of the attention 
of ripe students of fourteen or sixteen in the University 
Schools." 2 

These statements are based upon an examination of the 
curricula indicated in University statutes and in certain 
time-tables of the arrangement of lectures which filled a 
student's day. We know, for instance, from the list of 
books prescribed for the degrees of A.B. and A.M. in Paris 
in 1254, that Aristotle was the chief author whom they were 
required to study, and that Vergil appears to have found 
no place in the curriculum. The same thing is true of Paris 
in 1366, of Oxford in 1267 and 1408, and of Leipzig in 1410. 
The course of study at Oxford was much like that at Paris, 
although in theory the trivium and quadrinum were still 
regarded as a part of the requirement for the A.M. degree. 
Yet they did not appear in the formal list of studies. In 
2 Rashdall, Op. alt., Vol. I, pp. 71, 72. 



VERGIL AND HUMANISM 69 

1431 at Oxford, however, the curriculum of the candidate 
for a Master's degree must include "rhetoricam per tres 
terminos, videlicet rhetoricam Aristotelis, seu quartam 
Topicorujn Boethii, aut Tullium in nova rhetorica, vel Ovi- 
dium Metamorphoseos sive poetriam Virgilii," an interesting 
indication of the slow return of the Latin classics. But 
Aristotle was still the favorite. Not only is he placed at the 
head of such a list as that given above, but there is a record 
that in 1448 a Bachelor at Oxford begged that a lecture 
upon the Georgics of Vergil which had been imposed upon 
him be changed to one upon the De Anima. The method 
of classroom procedure in the Middle Ages, too, was not 
conducive to any intimate knowledge of the authors read. 
On account of the difficulty of procuring manuscripts, the 
students were usually unsupplied with copies of the text. 
The lecturer, therefore, read the book aloud, pausing fre- 
quently and at great length to read the comments of learned 
men upon the passage, which usually appeared in the form 
of a marginal gloss, and to add some remarks of his own. 
In this way, the original words of the writer were frequently 
nearly lost and forgotten in the midst of such a wilderness of 
comment. One of the things insisted upon by the humanists 
was a careful study of the texts themselves, with resultant 
formation of independent judgment based upon personal 
knowledge. 

At the close of his poem, The Battle of the Seven Arts, 
Henri d'Andeli prophesies thus: 

Sirs, the times are given to emptiness; 
Soon they will go entirely to naught, 
For thirty years this will continue. 
Until a new generation will arise, 
Who will go back to Grammar.^ 

' Henri d'Andeli, Battle of the Seven Arts. Edited and translated 
by Louis John Paetow. Univ. of Cal. 1914. II. 450-54. 



70 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

But in spite of the protests of men like John of Salisbury, 
Alexander Neekam, John Garland, Gerald de Barri, and 
Henri d'Andeli, it was much more than thirty years before 
the New Learning may be said to have begun. D'Andeli's 
poem was probably written in the second quarter of the 
thirteenth century, and it is from the classical studies of 
Petrarch, nearly a century later, that we date the revival 
of the interest in the ancient authors. And although the 
poet looked to the North for the coming of the "new genera- 
tion," and believed that no good could come out of Lom- 
bardy, yet it was in Italy that the "first modern man" 
was born. 

Although Petrarch was not primarily an educator, his 
influence was nevertheless very great. His revolt against 
scholasticism, his successful search for Ciceronian texts, 
his love and understanding of the classical writers which 
made them his friends rather than merely the authors of 
texts to be studied, all pointed the way which later peda- 
gogues followed in their writings and in their classroom 
practice. Schoolmasters like Vittorino da Feltre, who 
taught in the "Pleasant House" at Mantua, a city full of 
the memories of Vergil, Guarini, who lectured on Greek and 
Latin literature at Ferrara, and Politian at Florence, all in- 
cluded Vergil in their courses. Treatises like the De Liber- 
orum Educatione of Aeneas Sylvius advocated the study of 
the classics, and Maffeo Vegio, the author of the thirteenth 
book of the Aeneid, laid special emphasis on the importance 
of studying Vergil in his De Educatione Liberorum. He still 
clung to the old allegorical interpretation of his poems, as 
did Petrarch also, but he put himself on record as Vergil's 
defender against all attacks. 

The cause of the ancient classics was helped along by the 
introduction of the study of Greek into Italy. Pilatus, the 
instructor of Petrarch and Boccaccio, and Chrysoloras were 



VERGIL AND HUMANISM 71 

among the first to bring the language across the Adriatic, 
and the latter gathered about him many pupils who even- 
tually spread the new study all over Europe. But un- 
fortunately for the literary , supremacy of Italy, her scholars 
eventually ran their classicism into a formalism which 
checked spontaneity, and justified to a certain extent Nor- 
den's seemingly paradoxical remark that the humanists 
killed the Latin language. 

Meanwhile humanism was moving north. Already in 
the fourteenth century, classicism was revived at Paris 
under Nicolas of Clemangis, with a strong protest against 
the scholastic method. In the fifteenth century, German 
educators like Hegius, Wessel, Agricola and von Lange, 
were revolting against scholasticism, and there were two 
opposing parties in the Universities, with the humanist faction 
steadily growing in power. Here the aim of most of the 
humanists, like Wimpfeling, was to use the new-found knowl- 
edge as the basis of social and religious reform. But here too 
the study of the classics degenerated in the later Renais- 
sance into a formal Ciceronianism, the chief object of which 
was to impart a perfect Latin style after the manner of the 
great prose master of Rome. The emphasis in the cur- 
ricula of the Gymnasien was definitely placed on the careful 
study of Cicero, almost to the exclusion of other writers. 
And the study of all the classics became narrow, confining 
itself to drill in Latin Grammar, and a detailed examination, 
both grammatical and rhetorical, of Cicero, Ovid, Terence, 
Vergil, and the historians, with the redeeming trait of requir- 
ing close application to the texts themselves. 

The story of the coming of humanism to England is well 
known, and the names of Erasmus, Colet, Sir Thomas More, 
and the scarcely less familiar ones of Selling, Linacre, Grocyn, 
and Lyly, mark a period of intense enthusiasm for the new 
learning, and of a belief, especially on the part of Colet, 



72 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

the founder of the famous school for boys at the eastern 
end of St. Paul's churchyard, that the knowledge of Latin 
and Greek could best be used to further the familiarity of 
the common people with the Scriptures. It was, however, 
largely an academic revival of the interest in Greek and 
Latin, and the classics were not yet assimilated in vernac- 
ular literature. It was Lyly's Grammar, used for many 
years in the schools, which was representative of this aca- 
demic nature of the classical enthusiasm of these years, 
while the allusions in the dramas of his grandson, John, 
show that in the days of Queen Elizabeth the appeal of the 
classics was no longer merely to scholars. The path of those 
who, like Cheke and Ascham, were endeavoring to carry 
on the torch lighted by Erasmus and his contemporaries 
was by no means free from obstructions. The opponents 
of the study of Greek called themselves the Trojans, and 
assumed the names of Priam, Hector, and Paris. Tyndale 
tells how they showed in their pulpits their opposition to 
the study of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, ''some beating 
the pulpit with their fists for madness, and roaring out with 
open and foaming mouth, that if there were but one Terence 
or Virgil in the world, and that same in their sleeves, and a 
fire before them, they would burn them therein, though 
it should cost them their lives." 

But all their violence could not stop entirely the progress 
of humanistic education. And the reading of Vergil, which, 
as we have seen, was rare in the preceding centuries, so that 
Chaucer's knowledge of him stands out as remarkable, 
was now one of the most important parts of the curriculum 
of both school and college. His works were read, not only 
for their poetic beauty, but for their practical value as well. 
Cardinal Wolsey, who endowed a school at Ipswich and a 
college at Oxford, planned the course of study for the boys 
in the school himself. The classes at Ipswich were to 



VERGIL AND HUMANISM 73 

study in succession Cato, Aesop and Terence, and in the 
fourth year, " Virgil himself , of all poets the chief , . . . whose 
verses should be read with a beautiful sonorous voice, so 
that their majesty may be better felt," and after Vergil, 
Cicero, Sallust, Caesar, Horace, and Ovid. 

>^/^ Copies have come down to us of the time-tables of classes 
at Eton and at Winchester about 1530. At the former school, 
the fourth form on Friday and Saturday read "Vergilii 
( buccolica," and the fifth, sixth, and seventh forms, on the 
same days, "Vergilii Eneis." For the fifth form at Win- 
chester, "There constructyons is throwgh owte ye weke 
unto fryday Vergills Eglogs & an other." The page de- 
tailing the work of the higher forms is lost, but undoubtedly 
they too read "Vergilii Eneis." The time-table of West- 
minster School thirty years later includes Vergil and Homer 
for the sixth and seventh forms. The school statutes of the 
j Free Grammar School of St. Bees in Cumberland, drawn 
up in 1583, include Vergil in the curriculum. And finally, 
Charles Hoole's New Discovery of the Old Art of Teaching 

I J -. Schoole, published in 1659, but written in 1636, while it 

'N suggests new methods of teaching, gives a list of the books 

which were then and had been for many years in use in the 

' grammar schools throughout the country, a list which 

includes Vergil, Ovid, Cicero, Horace, Seneca, and Terence, 
as well as some of the Latin writers of the Renaissance. 

Meanwhile, writers like Sir Thomas Elyot and Roger 
Ascham were advocating the study of Vergil. He must be 
studied, says Elyot in his Boke Called the Gouernour, and it 
will prove an enchantment. "What thinge can be more 
familiar than his bucolikes? nor no wark so nigh approcheth 
to the commune daliaunce and maners of children, and the 
praty controversies of the simple shepherds, therin con- 
tained, wonderfully rejoyceth the childe that hereth hit 
well declared as I knowe by myne owne experience. In 



74 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

his Georgikes, Lorde! what plesaunt varietie there is: 
the divers graynes, herbes, and flowers that be there de- 
scribed, that reding therin, hit semeth to a man to be in a 
delectable gardeine or paradise; what ploughe man knoweth 
so moche of husbandry as there is expressed?" 

The study of the classics did not stop with the grammar 
schools as it had done in the Middle Ages. While Aristotle 
and scholasticism were not driven immediately from the 
Universities, yet new colleges were founded in both great 
institutions of higher education whose special purpose 
was the fostering of the new learning. In the late fifteenth 
century Petrarch was being read at Cambridge, an indica- 
tion that an interest in the classics was beginning, and 
permission was given for a vacation lecture on Terence. In 
1506 Christ's College was founded, where the bo7iae artes 
were to be studied, and a college lecturer to give lectures 
on the "works of poets and orators." In 1540 the Regius 
Professorships were founded, and Ascham, writing to a 
friend a few years later, says, "Cambridge is quite another 
place, so substantially and splendidly has it been endowed 
by the royal munificence." Going on to speak of the 
study of Greek, he says, "Sophocles and Euripides are more ] 
familiar authors than Plautus was in your time." But he ' 
continues, "Nor do we disregard the Latin authors, but 
study with the greatest zeal the choicest writers of the best 
period." And in 1546, Trinity College was founded to be 
a college of literature, the sciences, philosophy, the "good 
arts," and sacred theology.^ ! 

Nor was Oxford much behind. The addition to the 
curriculum in 1431 of the alternatives of Cicero, Ovid, and 
Vergil, has already been mentioned. In 1517 was char- 
tered Corpus Christi College. "The statutes of Corpus 

* See J. B. MuUinger, A History of the University of Cambridge. 
Vol. I, pp. 433 ff. 



VERGIL AND HUMANISM 75 

Christi College," says Lyte in his History of Oxford, "show- 
very plainly the influence of the Renaissance. In the very 
first section, there is an apology for the use of barbarous 
words not known to Cicero. Some acquaintance with the 
works of Roman poets, orators, and historians, no less than 
with logic and philosophy is required of all candidates for 
scholarships. . . . Cicero, Sallust, Valerius Maximus, Sue- 
tonius, Pliny, Livy, and Quintilian are enumerated as the 
prose writers, and Virgil, Ovid, Lucan, Juvenal, Terence, 
and Plautus, as the poets to be expounded by the lecturer 
on humanity." There was also to be a lecturer on Greek 
grammar and literature, "an officer unknown in any earlier 
college." * 

And this training in the schools and colleges evidently 
made the reading of Vergil popular. For the day-book 
of John Dome, an Oxford book-seller, indicates that the 
text of Vergil was in great demand. In the year 1520, for 
which the record was kept, he sold twenty-nine copies of 
Vergil, this number being greater than that of the works of 
any other classic writer except Cicero, Terence, whose 
popularity was due partly to the vogue of plays on the 
model of Roman comedy, and Aristotle. 

Throughout the earlier years of the century, Greek was 
taught at the Universities, and bade fair to rival Latin in 
popularity and influence. But it was perhaps more "the 
learned ardor" of a comparatively small circle of scholars, 
and did not spread widely enough to survive the disturbing 
events of the fourth decade of the century, when the attend- 
ajice at the Universities rapidly dechned. By Mary's 
reign, the teaching of Greek had practically ceased at both 
Oxford and Cambridge, although it was soon revived. 
I Latin, however, with its firm basis of centuries of use, held 

* See H. C. M. Lyte, A History of the University of Oxford from the 
Earliest Times to the Year 1536. Lond. 1886. p. 412. 



76 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

its own. So Vergil, as opposed to the Greek writers, 
had in his favor not only the accident of having written 
in the more familiar language, but also the long popu- 
larity of his work and the unbroken tradition of reverence 
which had been associated with his name for many centuries. 
It is not strange, therefore, that in his particular depart- 
ments of the eclogue and the epic, Vergil held the field; 
his authority in the pastoral was threatened more by his 
Renaissance imitators than by his Greek master. 

The general result of this new element in the education 
of the Renaissance was a broadening in the scope of subject- 
matter and allusion in literature. This enrichment of the 
literary material naturally appeared first in Italy, where, 
as we have seen, the educational change began. Both 
Petrarch and Boccaccio wrote Eclogues after the Vergilian 
model, and set the example for the later Renaissance writers, 
such as Mantuan and Sannazaro. It was a visit to the 
tomb of Vergil that jfirst instilled into Boccaccio the desire 
to write poetry. To Petrarch Vergil was one of the "two 
eyes" of his discourse. His love of Vergil dated back to his 
boyhood days, when his father discovered him at Mont- 
pellier reading the classics instead of studying law, and 
threw the books into the fire. One of the volumes that the 
father repentantly snatched back from destruction on seeing 
his son's tears, was the Rhetoric of Cicero, and the other was 
a copy of Vergil, probably the same which has come down to 
us enriched by marginal comments and the record of do- 
mestic happenings on its pages. The memory of a Vergilian 
phrase, labor omnia vicit, cheered Petrarch in his famous 
ascent of Mont Ventoux, and more than a hundred quo- 
tations from his favorite poet are scattered through the 
pages of his familiar letters. In his second Letter to Cicero, 
he says that he had two guides, Cicero himself in prose, and 
Vergil in verse. He alludes to the story that Cicero heard 



VERGIL AND HUMANISM 77 

the sixth Eclogue recited in the theater, and exclaimed, 
"Spes altera Romae!" a phrase which Vergil later incor- 
porated into his "divine poem," and says that he is sure 
that had Cicero lived to see the Aeneid, he would have 
agreed with Propertius in calling it greater than the Iliad. 
The verse Letter to Vergil himself begins, "O illustrious Maro, 
bright luminary of eloquence and second hope of the Latin 
tongue," and in that to Homer, Petrarch enters into an 
elaborate defense of the Latin poet against the charge of 
stealing from the Greek. But most interesting of all is that 
portion of the Letter to Vergil in which he asks the poet where 
he is and who are his companions. He then proceeds to tell 
of the present condition of Vergil's favorite cities, Naples, 
Mantua, and Rome, in the second of which he is now writ- 
ing. As he wanders about the surrounding country, he 
says, he constantly wonders what paths, woods, and streams 
Vergil used to frequent, and adds, "Such thoughts as these, 
O Vergil, bring thee vividly before my eyes." ^ And yet 
Petrarch cannot break away from the allegorical interpre- 
tation of Vergil's poems, and in his old age writes, "Vergil's 
subject ... is the Perfect Man . . . the winds . . . blasts of 
anger and mad desire. . . . Aeolus is our reason. . . . Venus 
... is pleasure." 

But in spite of his admiration of Vergil and his use of 
him as a model in verse, Petrarch was exceedingly careful 
to avoid any verbal echoes of his lines. He was incredulous 
when a pupil, whom he had been cautioning against this 
very thing, accused him of having committed such a fault, 
and horrified when a Vergilian ending of one of his verses 
was pointed out to him in proof. 

His followers, however, were not so careful. Maffeo 
Vegio, or, to use the Latin form of his name, Maphaeus 

* See Petrarch's Letters to Classical Authors, translated ... by Mario 
Emilio Cosenza, Ph.D. Univ. of Chicago Press. 1910. 



78 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

Vegius, presumed to complete the Aeneid by adding a thir- 
teenth book, Pohtian imitated Vergil in his Sylvae, and San- 
nazaro not only wrote Piscatory Eclogues which owed much 
to the Eclogues, and drew some inspiration for his Arcadia 
from the Gallus, but spent twenty years on a Vergilian poem 
on the birth of Christ, De Partu Virginis. Mantuan's 
Eclogues, not very Vergilian, it is true, but written in the 
pastoral tradition derived from Vergil, were more popular 
than those of the master himself, and were used extensively 
in the grammar schools as textbooks. In the next century 
came some imitations of the Georgics, Alamanni's Colti- 
vazione, and Rucellai's Api. All these were justified by the 
doctrine preached in Vida's Art of Poetry, itself full of Ver- 
gilian and Homeric echoes, namely to imitate the ancients, 
and especially Vergil, who was to him the "father of verse," 
and to steal boldly and constantly from the classic authors. 

Come then, ye youths, and urge your generous toils; 
Come, strip the ancients, and divide the spoils 
Your hands have won.^ 

In the epic, since the days of Petrarch, the Aeneid had 
been the model for the poets of the Renaissance. He him- 
self had written a Latin epic, Africa, with Scipio Africanus 
as its hero, and by his precepts as well as by his example 
had set the fashion of imitating Vergil. The epics of Pulci, 
Boiardo, Ariosto, and their followers show the classical 
influence obscured by the romantic atmosphere, but in the 
Jerusalem Delivered, Tasso's borrowings from the Latin epic 
are numerous and obvious. The first line. 

Canto I'armi pietose, e '1 Capitano, 

is only the beginning of a paragraph which closely follows 
the opening of the Aeneid. Allecto appears, with familiar 

'' Pitt's translation. 



VERGIL AND HUMANISM 79 

characteristics, in the eighth and ninth books, the latter 
of which contains the exploits of the maiden warrior, Clorinda. 
There are numerous Vergilian names, such as Latinus and 
Picus. In the eleventh book is an account of the miraculous 
cure of Godfrey's arrow-wound, which is almost a literal 
translation of the description of the healing of Aeneas' 
wound by Venus. The final words of the enchantress 
Armida to Rinaldo follow faithfully the speeches of Dido 
in the fourth book of the Aeneid, and the shield of Rinaldo is 
clearly a reminiscence of that of Aeneas. 

At about the same time in France, Ronsard was working 
at his Franciade. Inspired with the desire to become the 
Vergil of his country, he wrote a classical epic celebrating 
Francus, the mythical founder of his race, who, like the Eng- 
lish Brutus, was of Trojan blood. In the sixteenth century, 
too, the Dido story was proving its popularity in Italy, 
France, and Germany, by becoming the subject of at least 
five plays, by Cinthio, Dolce, Jodelle, Knaustius, and 
Frischlin, which paralleled and probably had some influence 
on the production of similar plays in England, both by the 
University dramatists and by Marlowe and Nash. The 
influence of the Eclogues was perpetuated in Marot's French 
Eclogues, and that of the Georgics in Baif's Meteores and 
Kirchmayer's Agricultura Sacra. Vergilian criticism, or 
rather eulogy, is represented by Vida in Italy, and in France 
by Julius Caesar Scaliger. 

As will be evident in the next chapter, the literature of 
England in the sixteenth century showed the same changes 
in the use of Vergilian and other classical material as that 
of the continental nations. Both prose and poetry of the 
Renaissance are characterized by a closer adherence to 
fact, an increase in the number of Vergilian allusions and 
references, the growing popularity of the Dido story and 
the gradual change from Dares to Vergil as an authority, 



80 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

the widespread adoption of the eclogue form, and especially 
the greater amount of imitation and the change in the 
manner of using Vergilian material. In these changes, the 
translations of Vergil played a great part. Annibale Caro 
and Molza rendered his lines into Italian, and the work of 
Douglas, Surrey and Phaer undoubtedly helped to familiarize 
the general reader in England with his poems, and in turn, 
the greater knowledge of the Latin made popular the process 
of rendering them in the vulgar tongue. 

The first to translate the Aeneid * into an English vernac- 
ular was a Scotchman, Gavin Douglas, Bishop of Dunkeld. 
He began his work in 1512, and, according to his own state- 
ment, completed it in eighteen months, on the day of the 
Feast of Mary Magdalene, 1513. It comprises not only 
the twelve books of the Aeneid but the Supplementum 
Aeneidos by Maphaeus Vegius.^ The translation itself is 
in rhymed five-accented couplets, though the Prologues to 
the separate books vary in meter. It remained in manu- 
script until 1553, when it was printed by William Copland, 
in London. This first printed edition shows several altera- 
tions from the manuscripts, for not only are the portions of 
the Prologues which refer to the Virgiri and Purgatory omitted 
in deference to the anti-Catholic feeling of the time, but the 
whole adventure of Dido and Aeneas is passed over. This 
would undoubtedly have grieved the Bishop, had he 
known it, quite as much as had the expansion of that episode 
in the Eneydos of Caxton. For Douglas' oft-repeated claim 
was that he was faithful in rendering the meaning of his 
original. In the Prologue to Book I he says, contrasting 
his own treatment of the story with that of Caxton, between 

* There had been a prose version of the Aeneid in Gaelic before 1400, 
the Intheachta Aeniasa, ed. by Rev. George Calder, London, 1907. 
The MS is found in the Book of Ballymote, pp. 449-485. 

» Pubhshed at Venice in 1485. 



VERGIL AND HUMANISM 81 

which and the Aeneid there is no more resemblance than 
between the "devill and Sanct Austyne," 

Quhilk did my best, as my wit mycht attene, 
Virgillis versis to follow, and nathing fene. 

Fidelity to his original was necessary for him in view 
of his purpose in writing. In the Dyrectioun of his Buik and 
the Excusation of Hym Self, appended to the translation, he 
expresses his idea of the purpose and value of his work, say- 
ing that it is intended to be both pleasant and profitable, 
to pass the time for some people, and also to be of assistance 

To thaim wald VirgiU to childryng expone. 

It was his great desire that his favorite poet should become 
known to all his countrymen. "Go, wlgar Virgill," he says, 

Now salt thou with euery gentill Scot be kend. 
And to onletterit folk be red on hycht, 
That erst was bot with clerkis comprehend. 

The greatness of his task and the exalted position of his 
author made him very humble, and he begged that if any- 
thing went wrong, the blame might fall on him and not on 
Vergil, who alone deserved the praise if things went well. 
The Prologue of the first book is full of "commendations 
of Virgill," as the marginal note expresses it. The poem 
opens with a passage of eulogy, characteristic of the times 
in its extravagance and its reiterated praise of the genius of 
Vergil, which is contrasted with his own humble powers. 
He will, however, with his master's permission, into his 
"rural wlgar gros, write sum savoring" of the Aeneid. 
He goes on to say that it was at the instance of "Henry 
Lord Sanct Clair" that he undertook the translation. A de- 
tailed discussion of Caxton's faults of omission and com- 



82 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

mission, an explanation of the character of Aeneas, a criti- 
cism of Chaucer's attitude toward the hero of the poem, 
and a prayer to God for assistance in his work, make up the 
bulk of the rest of the Prologue. With a final appeal to 
Vergil to forgive him if he offends, he closes with a transla- 
tion of the four lines which Varius and Tucca excluded from 
the opening of the Aeneid. 

The Prologues to the other books are of varying impor- 
tance. Some, like those to the seventh and tenth, which 
contain the pictures of Winter and of May, are interesting 
because they indicate a true love of Nature and a power of 
description in the Scottish bishop; some, like the marvel 
of alliteration prefixed to the eighth book, are of linguistic 
value; others are of interest because they throw light on 
Douglas' knowledge of or attitude toward Vergil. Further 
information on the last matter is furnished by the com- 
ments which he added to a part of the first book, to which 
he refers in his address to Lord Sinclair: 

I have alsso a schort comment compild 
To expon strange histories and termes wild. 

His thorough knowledge ^^ of and close dependence on the 
original is distinctly different from the romanticizing tendency 
of Chaucer and Caxton. Not that the good bishop always 
approves of his author's theology. He knows that the 
stories of the pagan gods and goddesses are "fenyeit," but 
contents himself with explaining in his notes or prologues 
the hidden meaning in these fables, and does not drop them 
out of the story itself or substitute the Fiend for Juno. 

" Douglas also knew the Eclogues and Georgics, as is proved by- 
references to them in the fourth and fifth Prologues and in the Palice 
of Honour. There are also references in the latter poem to Sinon and 
to Vergil's magic mirror. The story of the Aeneid is summarized in 
three stanzas. 



VERGIL AND HUMANISM 83 

Let Virgyll hald his mawmentis to hym self; 

I wirschip noder idoU, stok, nor elf, 

Thocht furth I wryte so as myne autour dois. 

Yet some explanation is necessary to show why he has 
chosen to interpret this pagan poet for his countrymen. 
Not only is this poet of the "sugurat tone" the 

al and sum, quhat nedis moir. 
Of Latyne poetis that sens wes or befoir, 

but he is a moral instructor, almost a Christian in his ethical 
teaching. In this Douglas is carrying over the mediaeval 
tradition about Vergil and linking it with a more profound 
sympathy and reverence for what Vergil actually wrote than 
can be found in any of the writers of the preceding cen- 
turies. He was deeply impressed by the profundity of 
Vergil's philosophy, and almost despaired of understanding 
it himself or of making it clear to others. He believed 
that Aeneas represented the ideal prince and ruler, and as 
such was offered as a model, "an exampill and myrour to 
euery prince and nobyl man." In the sixth book especially 
Vergil showed himself as "a hie philosophour," and there 

wndir the cluddes of dirk poetry 
Hid lyis thair mony notable history. 

The belief that Vergil was a prophet of the Messiah finds 
expression in the Prologue to Book VI, where Douglas says, 

Thus faithfully in his Buikolikis he saith, 

The maid cumith bryngis new lynage fra hevin. 

And like many of the mediaeval writers, he finds evidences 
of an approach to Christian ideas in other places in the 
works of the pagan poet beside the fourth Eclogue. So his 
work is of value even to Christian folk. And if he does 
depart from the Christian faith at times, 

Na wondir; he was na cristin man, per de. 



84 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

In the translation itself, Douglas justifies his claim to 
fidelity to the Latin. His chief fault is a certain diffuseness 
and elaboration of the original, the bulk of the translation 
being much greater than that of the Aeneid itself. But that 
was characteristic of the period in which he was writing. 
He keeps faithfully to the ''sentence" even if he is forced 
to change the expression at times because of "sobtell wourd 
or the ryme." Francis Junius accused him of making many 
errors, but in reality there are very few. Among them may 
be mentioned the translation of viscum as "gum or glew," 
and of Italiam contra as "enemy to Italic," and the arith- 
metical sum which transforms terque quaterque heati into 

sevin tymes full happy and blist war thai. 

Sometimes he inserts a phrase in explanation of an unusual 
word, as in the line. 

For nymphes, goddes of fluidis and woddis grene, 

or in personal comment on the situation, as in the place where 
he expresses his opinion of Juno, 

Quhen that Juno, till hir euerlestand schame, 
The eterne wound hid in hir brest ay grene. 
Onto hirselfe thus spak in propir tene. 

On the whole, however, this first version of the great 
Roman epic is a good translation. It has failed to catch 
quite the elevation of tone that marks the Latin, but it is 
frankly a rendering in a vernacular which is "imperfite" 
beside the Roman tongue, couched in "haymly plane termes 
famyliar." While it sometimes lacks dignity, however, 
it is spirited and full of vigor. This may be seen in the 
account of the death of Priam or the description of the last 
words of Dido, both of them excellent touchstones to deter- 



VERGIL AND HUMANISM 85 

mine the value of a translation. The former is especially- 
vivid: 

But lo! Polites, ane of Priamus sonnis, 

Quhilk fra the slauchter of Pirrus away run is, 

Throw wapnis fleing and his enemyis all, 

By lang throwgangis and mony woyd hall; 

Woundit he was, and come to seek reskew; 

Ardentlie Pirrus can him fast persew, 

With grundin lance at hand so neir furth strykit, 

Almaist he haid him tuichit and arrekit. 

Quhill at the last, quhen he is cumin, I wane, 

Befoir his faderis and his moderis ene, 

Smate him doun deid, in thair sycht quhar he stude, 

The gaist he yald with habundance of blude. 

Then, after the aged Priam has hurled defiance at the 
youthful Pyrrhus, comes the Greek's insolent answer and 
the murder of the king: 

To Pilleus sone, my fadir, thou most ga; 

Ber him this message, ramember well thou tell 

Him all my werkis and deidis sa cruell. 

Now sail thou dee. And with that word, in tene, 

The auld trumbhng towart the altair he drew, 

That in the halt blude of his sone, sched new, 

Funderit ; and Pirrus grippis him by the hair 

With his left hand, and with the vdir all bair 

Drew furth his schjoiand swerd, quhilk in his syde 

Festynnit, and vnto the hiltis did it hyde." 

For passages like this, we can forgive the Scottish church- 
man for making the Sibyl a "nwn" who tells Aeneas not to 
forget his beads. It was a task which made the Scottish 
nation proud to claim him, and one of the greatest writers 
of his race in after years described him as 

" Aen. 2. 526-532, 547-553. 



86 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

More pleased that, in a barbarous age, 
He gave rude Scotland Virgil's page, 
Than that beneath his rule he held 
The bishopric of fair Dunkeld.^^ 

Four years after the translation of Gavin Douglas was 
published, appeared a version of the second and fourth 
books of the Aeneid by the Earl of Surrey. This is famous 
chiefly for the fact that it is written in blank verse, this 
being the first instance of its use in English. There has 
been much discussion of the source of his meter, some trac- 
ing it to Italian origin, others attributing it to native inspira- 
tion. George Frederick Nott, in his edition of the works 
of Wyatt and Surrey, ^^ endeavored to show that the trans- 
lation was originally written in unrhymed Alexandrines, 
and then cut down to decasyllabic lines. But it seems in- 
credible that the poet should have attempted such a task. 
He had very probably seen the translation of Gavin Douglas, 
and indeed follows him quite closely at times; ^^ and it is 
very possible that his acquaintance with the Scotchman's 
five-accented couplets, combined with some knowledge 
of the Italian version of the Aeneid in blank verse by Molza, 
who allowed his patron. Cardinal Hippolito di Medici, the 
credit, and influenced by some prophetic sympathy with 
the dislike of the EHzabethans for rhyme, supplied the 
impetus for the use of this new meter. Thus there may 
easily have been several influences which brought about 
the result, and it seems most probable that they were all 
operative to a greater or less degree. 

But our chief interest is in the translation as a transla- 
tion, although this is its least important side in the history 

'2 Scott, Marmion, Canto VI. 11. 

1' Dissertation, pp. cc ff. Also see Otto Fast, Uher Surrey's Virgil- 
tibersetzung, Weimar, 1903. 

" See examples in Nott's edition. 



VERGIL AND HUMANISM 87 

of English literature. Although Surrey undoubtedly owes 
something to Douglas' version, yet he has aimed to repro- 
duce the stateliness of the Latin rather than merely to 
render it intelligible to "onletterit folk." He abandons, 
therefore, the "haymly termes" of the Scotchman, and 
expresses himself in a style and language more fitted to the 
dignity of the original. Compare, for example, the two 
accounts of the speech of Laocoon. Douglas translates 
the passage thus : 

Following ane great rowt, the priest Laocone, 

From the chief temple rynnand in full grete hye. 

On far, O wretchit peple, can he crye. 

How greit wodnes is this that 3e now mene, 

3 our enemy is away salit, gif 3e wene, 

Or gif 36 traist ony Grekis giftis be 

Without dissait, falsait and subtilite! 

Knaw 3e nocht bettir the quent Ulexes slycht? 

Surrey, with less vigor, perhaps, but with a certain accession 
of dignity, renders the passage as follows : 

Lo! foremost of a rout that foUow'd him, 
Kindled Laocoon hasted from the tower, 
Crying far off: "O wretched citizens! 
What so great kind of frensy fretteth you? 
Deem ye the Greeks our enemies to be gone? 
Or any Greekish gifts can you suppose 
Devoid of guile? Is so Ulysses known? "^^ 

But while the translation is a degree more sophisticated, 
it is not lacking in spirit and liveliness. Being in blank 
verse, it has a freer movement than the later versions that 
were restricted by rhyme, whether that of the " fourteeners " 
of Phaer and Twyne, the heroic couplet of Dry den, or the 

15 Aen. 2. 40-44. 



88 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

various other verse forms adopted by subsequent transla- 
tors. To apply once more one of the touchstones for a good 
translation, take Surrey's version of Dido's last curse upon 
Aeneas : 

This I require; these words with blood I shed, 

And Tyrians, ye his stock and all his race 

Pursue with hate! reward our cinders so. 

No love nor league betwixt our peoples be. 

And of our bones some wreaker may there spring, 

With sword and flame that Trojans may pursue 

Now, from henceforth, when that our power may stretch. 

Our coasts to them contrary be for aye 

I crave of God ; and our streams to their floods : 

Arms unto arms, and offspring of each race 

With mortal war each other may for-do.^® 

Surrey kept fairly close to his original, and yet, with a 
sweetness of flow and a freedom in the movement of his 
lines, remarkable in the infancy of blank verse, he has 
succeeded in making of his translation a poem which com- 
pares favorably with the original productions of the same 
period, and never outrages the spirit of his author. 

In his Discourse of English Poetrie, William Webbe,^^ 
speaking of the translators of the sixteenth century, says, 
"I can no longer forget those learned gentlemen which 
tooke such profitable paynes in translating the Latine poets 
into our English tongue, whose deserts in that behalf are 
more than I can utter. Among these I euer esteemed . . . 
Master D. Phaer: without doubt the best: who as indeede 
hee had the best peece of poetry whereon to sette a most 
gallant verse, so performed he it accordingly." This ''gal- 
lant verse" was the English "fourteener," a meter revived 

i« Aen. 4. 621-9. 

" Webbe himself translated the first two Eclogues into English hex- 
ameters. 



VERGIL AND HUMANISM 89 

three centuries later by William Morris, capable of some 
vigor and swing, but also tending to become monotonous, 
and differing widely from the roll of the hexameter in Latin. 
Thomas Phaer's version of the first seven books of the 
Aeneid was published in 1558, just one year after Surrey's 
translation appeared. Four years later appeared an edi- 
tion of nine books and part of the tenth, representing Phaer's 
work as far as he carried it before his death. Thomas 
Twyne, however, completed the translation, and in 1573 
issued the entire poem. Ten years later the thirteenth 
book by Maphaeus Vegius was added. The translation was 
popular and went through at least five more editions by 
1620. 

The 1573 edition, the first containing the complete poem, 
is a little volume in black letter, including a translation of 
"Virgil's life out of Donatus and the Argument before every 
booke." It also has a marginal gloss, which is fully as 
interesting as the translation itself, for it consists, not only 
of a summary of the story, but of quaint explanatory re- 
marks and naive comment and criticism. In several places 
it indicates the survival of that old theory, so strong in Gavin 
Douglas, that the poem contains some hidden meaning. 
Such for instance is the note which says, "She appoints 
him first to the golden tree wherby is signified wisdome 
that ouercometh al things." Also in "Master Phaers 
Conclusion to his interpretation of the Aeneidos of Virgil," 
the translator begs for leniency from his "right worshipful 
maisters, and students of Universities, and such as be 
teachers of children and readers of this auctour in Latin," 
in reference to any deviations he may have made from the 
original, and continues, "For, (besides the diuersitie be- 
tweene a construction and a translation) you know there 
be many misticall secretes in this writer, which uttered in 
English would shew little pleasour, and in myne opinion 



90 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

are better to be untouched, than to diminishe the grace of 
the rest with tediousnes and darknes." 

In view of his meter and his quaint, simple way of trans- 
lating, he is probably at his best in such a book as the fifth, 
where he seems to take a real delight in telling of the funeral 
games. His description of the foot-race is particularly 
good. It also illustrates the fact that he keeps the half -lines. 

First and before all other bodies, nimble Nisus springs, 

More swifter yet than wind, and than the dint of lightnings wings, 

Next unto him, but long aloof, in distance next of place, 

Doth SaUus pursue, and after him a certain space, 

Eurialus the thirde. 

And next Eurialus sir Helimus ensues, and ioyntly than 

Behold he flies, and heele to heele with him Diores ran. 

With elbow next and next, and if the race do long remaine, 

Is like to scape them all, or one to leave in doubtful gaine. 

And towards now the latter end they drew, and wery all, 

They ran with panting breathes, whan sodenly did Nisus fall, 

(Unhappy man) where hefers had ben slaine by chaunce on grasse, 

And ground was slypper made by certein blood that shed there 

was. 
There now the gentle lad, (whan conquest proud he had in hande) 
His legges he could not hold, nor stombling so, could longer stand, 
But groueling flat he fel, and in the slime embrewd him vUe. 
Yet not Eurialus his freend, did he forget that while: 
For quickly sterting he, sir Salius way with fote did stop, 
That headlong downe in dust he ouerturnid taile and top. 
Eurialus than springing skuddid forth, and through his frend, 
With ioyful shoutes of men, he gets the chief at races end.^* 

Richard Stanyhurst's translation of the first four books 
of the Aeneid deserves Kttle notice except as a metrical curi- 
osity. It is written in quantitative hexameters, constructed 
according to a prosody of his own, "squaring somewhat from 

" Am. 5. 31&-338. 



VERGIL AND HUMANISM 91 

the Latin." As a translation it is of no value, for the reader 
is so concerned with the structure of the hnes that he cannot 
find much Vergil in it. But as an example of the absurd 
lengths to which were carried the theories of the Areopagus, 
that circle of Elizabethans who were rebelling against rhyme 
and advocating the use of classical meters in English, it is 
of great interest. Stanyhurst had a high opinion of his 
author both as a poet and as a moral teacher, and he ex 
presses his admiration of him in the preface to his transla- 
tion. "But oure Virgil," he says, ". . . dooth laboure, 
in telling as yt were a Cantorburye tale, too ferret owt the 
secretes of Nature, with woordes so fitlye coucht, wyth 
verses so smoothlye slychte, with sentences so featlye 
orderd, with orations so neathe burnisht, with similitudes 
so aptly applyed, with eeche decorum so duely obserued, 
as in truth hee hath in right purchased too hymself thee 
name of a surpassing poet, thee fame of an od oratoure, 
and thee admiration of a profound philosopher." So high 
an estimate of Vergil's powers would lead us to expect some- 
thing remarkable in the way of a translation, at least some- 
thing approaching a sympathetic appreciation of the Latin. 
But one example will suffice to show that this expectation 
must be disappointed. What must we think of the me- 
trical ear or the poetic sense of a translator who renders 
Dido's last imprecation in these strange hexameters? 

Let ther one od captayne from my boans rustye be springing. 

With fire eke and weepons thee caytiefs Troian auenging; 

Now; then; at eeche season; what so eare streingthe mighty e shal 

happen, 
Let shoare bee to shoare, let seas contrarye toe seas stand, 
And to armours, armours I do pray, let progenye bicker.^' 

19 Aen. 4. 625-9. 



s 



CHAPTER V 

SPENSER AND THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 

In view of the increased acquaintance with the Aeneid 
itself, it is not strange that in the sixteenth century the 
mediaeval ideas of the poem and of its author should gradu- 
ally lose their hold on the imagination. There was, however, 
no decided break between the mediaeval and the Renaissance 
traditions of Vergil, and in the midst of the "new learning," 
some beliefs survived from the Middle Ages. Although the 
figure of Vergil the magician, never very popular in England, 
scarcely appears after the first quarter of the century, 
Hawes' Pastime of Pleasure contains the "basket story," 
and the publication of Doesborcke's Lyfe of Virgilius in- 
dicates that there was still in England about 1530 some 
interest in the stories which had been in such high favor on 
the continent. Practically the only reference after this, 
however, is the allusion in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus to 

learned Maro's golden tomb : 
The way he cut an English mile in length, 
Through a rock of stone in one night's space. 

But the desire of the Christian humanists to bring all 
their knowledge to serve the interests of the moral and 
religious advancement of the human race, helped to per- 
petuate the love for allegorical interpretation and the 
belief in the moral purpose of the Aeneid, inherited from 
the days of Fulgentius and of John of Salisbury. Nor was 
this belief incompatible with a knowledge of the original. 
In fact, it depended on it, and so survived in the work of 

92 



SPENSER AND THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 93 

writers from Douglas to Spenser. Sir Philip Sidney, for 
example, reiterates in varying forms his belief that "no philos- 
opher's precepts can sooner make you an honest man than 
the reading of Virgil." Douglas justified his translation 
of a pagan poet, and Spenser his use of allegory by refer- 
ence to the hidden meaning of the work of Vergil. ' ^. -^ 

The change from the mediaeval is most strongly marked 
in two ways, in the increase in the number of references to 
the poems of Vergil and of quotations from them, and in 
the nature of these references. The increase in the number 
of the references is seen most easily in the prose of the 
period. Nearly every other page of Sir Philip Sidney's i 
Defence of Poesy, for instance, will yield at least one quota- 
tion from Vergil, or one reference to the characters in the 
story which he tells. The Ehzabethan critics use him 
constantly . for illustration or confirmation. The very fact 
that many of them were interested in either supporting 
or attacking the theories of the Areopagus in regard to the 
use of classical meters in English, and were frequently ex- 
perimenting themselves with hexameters from Vergil, also 
shows the increasing knowledge of and interest in his poetry. 

It is in the poetry of the century that the change in the 
nature of the references and of the use of Vergilian material 
is most apparent. Gower and Lydgate, as we have seen, 
made many references to Dido and Aeneas, but they were 
in the main conventional, and the result of a knowledge 
of the romantic conception of their story rather than a 
scholarly acquaintance with the original. There is a cer- 
tain amount of survival of this conventional attitude in the 
poems of the Renaissance, especially in the lyrics of the 
Elizabethan collections of songs and sonnets. Dido is 
still in many cases the forsaken woman, and Aeneas the 
false traitor, the type of unfaithfulness in man as Cressid 
is of unfaithfulness in woman, and Penelope of faithfulness 



94 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

and Helen of beauty. The poets had not yet grown entirely 
away from this simple and obvious interpretation of the 
story. 

On the other hand, there is a sufficient number of refer- 
ences which show an acquaintance with the text of the 
Aeneid at first hand. Such, for instance, is the beginning 
of Wyatt's unfinished Song of lopas, 

When Dido feasted the wand 'ring Trojan knight, 

Whom Juno's wrath with storms did force in Libic sands to Ught; 

That mighty Atlas taught, the supper lasting long. 

With crisped locks on golden harp lopas sang in song, 

or the same author's lines in one of his Odes, 

For though hard rocks among 

She seems to have been bred; 
And of the tiger long 

Been nomished and fed. 

The numerous references to Nisus and Euryalus, the use 
of Scylla and Charybdis in imagery, the allusion in 

house without thy head! 

ship without a steare! 
Thy Palynurus now is dead. 

As shortly will appear, 

all gathered from TotteVs Miscellany and its followers, are 
evidences of a knowledge of the entire Aeneid. And although 
Turbervile's Pretie Epigram of a Scholer, that having read 
Virgils Aeneidos, maried a curst wife, quotes only the first 
two words of the Aeneid, it may fairly be conjectured that 
both the author and the subject of the epigram had read 
further, Grimoald's sonnet Concerning Virgils Eneids shows 
by its high praise that the author was a reader and admirer 
of Vergil. 



SPENSER AND THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 95 

The second passage quoted from Sir Thomas Wyatt above, 
together with a similar one from the Gallery of Gallant 
Inventions, 

Yet lo, thy proofe I know, the trusty waight, 
Of Tygars milke, thou fostred v/ert from molde,^ 

illustrates the new method of imitation from the classics. 
During the Middle Ages, and up through the fifteenth cen- 
tury, a poet very seldom used Vergilian phraseology unless 
he was referring directly to the story of the Aeneid. He 
rarely adopted a line or phrase or figure and applied it to 
some other situation. Chaucer and his contemporaries, 
with mediaeval dependence on their "auctours," constantly 
used the name of Vergil to support their story, and frankly 
borrowed descriptions, such as that of Lady Fame. But 
after Vida had given his advice to steal boldly and con- 
tinually from the classics, and especially from Vergil, and 
after the new education had brought to all men of letters a 
. thorough familiarity with his work, poets began to imitate 
lines, paragraphs, whole passages of the Eclogues, the Georgics, 
or the Aeneid, with no more acknowledgment to Vergil than 
Vergil had made to his Greek models. Imitation became 
one of the cardinal principles of writing, and the poetry of the 
EUzabethans is filled with echoes of their reading in the 
^classics. 
/^ The most elaborate piece of Vergilian imitation before 
Spenser, is Sackville's Induction to the 1563 edition of the 
Mirror for Magistrates. The Middle Ages and humanism 
meet in this poem in a remarkable way. The early stanzas 
are full of Chaucerian echoes, with the characteristic 
mediaeval fondness for elaborate astronomical information 
and for detailed description shown in the exaggerations 
in the picture of Sorrow. But with the poet's recognition 

1 Cf . Am. 4. 365-7. 



96 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

of Sorrow as a goddess, and her proposal to conduct him 
to the Underworld, begins the imitation of the Aeneid. 
Like Aeneas and the Sibyl, Sackville and his guide come to 
"Lake Averne," 

Which up in the ayer such stinking vapors throwes 
That over there, may flye no fowle but dyes, 
Choakt with the pestilent savours that aryse. 

The cave too, "wyth ougly mouth and grisly jawes," is 
like that in Vergil, "vastoque immanis hiatu." At the en- 
trance to Hell they find a number of allegorical figures, 
like those in Vergil, Remorse, Dread, Revenge, Miserie, 
Care, Sleep, Old Age, Maladie, Famine, Death, and War.* 
The mere name or the suggestive adjective of Vergil's ac- 
count is elaborated by Sackville into a passage of several 
lines, never less than seven, and in the description of Old 
Age, forty-two. ** Heavy slepe the cosin of death," "sad 
Olde age," and "pale Maladie," the Vergilian expressions, 
do not satisfy him ; he must add to them many lines in which 
the repugnant characteristics of these figures are dwelt on 
with loving minuteness. There are other Vergilian reminis- 
cences included in these lines, such as the echo of Evander's 
wish that his youth might return. The shield of War is 
an obvious copy of the shield of Aeneas. It is adorned with 
pictures of historical or legendary events, not with alle- 
gorical figures like that of Achilles. The picture of the fall 
of Troy was evidently written with Vergil in mind, especially 
the narrative of the capture of Cassandra and the death of 
Priam. The descriptions of Charon and of Cerberus are 
taken straight from the Aeneid, and also the account of 
the launching of the skiff with its corporeal burden. The 
lines, 

* Cf. Spenser, Faerie Queene, II. 7. 21 ff. 



SPENSER AND THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 97 

And furth we launch ful fraughted to the brinke, 
Whan with the unwonted weyght, the rustye keele 
Began to creake as if the same should sinke, 

are the Vergilian 

gemuit sub pondere cumba 
sutilis et multam accepit rimosa paludem. 

And finally, the shades in the Underworld are divided into 
the Vergilian classes, "babes . . . maydes unwed . . . gyltles 
slayne . . . lovers dead." 

The increased popularity of the story of the Aeneid 
was also a powerful factor in determining the nature of 
Vergilian influence in the century. The weight of authority 
on the story of Troy was gradually being transferred from 
Dares Phrygius to Vergil. William Warner in the last 
decade of the century tells the old traitor story in the body 
of his Albion's England, but appends a prose abstract of 
the Aeneid in which he casts a slur at those authorities who 
"noted" the hero of that poem "of disloyalty toward 
Priam." The two versions stood side by side for much 
of the time, but the balance of power was changing. " Sinon's 
shifts" were spoken of rather than Aeneas' disloyalty. 
The story of Aeneas' wanderings, his love-affair with Dido, 
and his battles in Italy, was becoming an old and familiar 
tale. And Dido's tragic love-affair was the most familiar por- 
tion of the narrative, and the most appealing, then as now. 
The new knowledge of her story, as it was told by the master 
himself, and the centuries of romantic tradition, combined 
to make her a favorite, as is proved by the constant refer- 
ences to her in poetry and the repeated use of this incident 
in the drama. 

But perhaps the thing which is most significant of the 
change during the Renaissance, is the contrast between 
the picture drawn of the personality of Vergil himself by 



98 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

John Doesborcke, somewhere around 1530, or by Stephen 
Hawes, and that drawn by Ben Jonson in his Poetaster, in 
1601. There stands the soHtary figure of the magician, 
utterly divorced, to all intents and purposes, from the time 
LQ which he lived and the literature which he produced, a 
figure belonging essentially to the M ddle Ages. Here is 
the author of the Aeneid, represented as moving in the 
midst of the court society of Augustan Rome. It is true 
that he may represent Chapman or Shakespeare or some 
other of Jonson 's contemporaries, but nevertheless he is 
brought upon the stage in company with Horace and Ovid 
and Maecenas, and some attempt is made to show him as he 
must have appeared to his contemporaries. To read first 
a passage from the Virgilius, and then one from the Poetaster, 
is to step over the gap between the Middle Ages and the 
Renaissance. To Doesborcke Vergil is merely "a fayre 
and a wyse yonge man, and conynge in the scyence of 
negromancy aboue all men than lyuynge," having no other 
connection with literature save that he is a schoolmaster, 
and often coming into direct conflict with the Emperor. 
But Ben Jonson 's Augustus, on hearing of the approach of 
Vergil, says, 

Rome's honour is at hand, then. Fetch a chair, 
And set it on our right hand; where 'tis fit 
Rome's honour and ovu- own should ever sit, 

and Horace, Gallus, and Tibullus pass judgment on him: 

Hot. I judge him of a rectified spirit, 
By many revolutions of discourse 
(In his bright reason's influence) refined 
From all the tartarous moods of common men; 
Bearing the nature, and simiHtude 
Of a right heavenly body; most severe 
In fashion and collection of himself, 
And then, as clear and confident as Jove. 



SPENSER AND THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 99 

Gal. And yet so chaste and tender is his ear, 
In suffering any syllable to pass, 
That he thinks may become the honour'd name 
Of issue to his so examined self, 
That all the lasting fruits of his full merit, 
In his own poems, he doth still distaste. 
As if his mind's piece, which he strove to paint, 
Could not with fleshly pencils have her right. 

Tib. . . . That which he hath writ 

Is with such judgment labour'd, and distill'd 
Through all the needful uses of our hves. 
That could a man remember but his Unes, 
He should not touch at any serious point, 
But he might breathe his spirit out of him. 

Hor. And for his poesy, 'tis so rammed with life, 
That it shall gather strength of hfe, with being, 
And live hereafter, more admired, than now. 

Although the last two speeches may be intended as a criti- 
cism of Chapman or Shakespeare, it is nevertheless signifi- 
cant that Vergil should be the author chosen to represent 
a man so honored, the one to sit at Caesar's right hand, and 
to give judgment in a literary court. And there is little 
here given in the description of the Roman poet and his 
work that has not been or might not be considered applicable 
to the historic Vergil. 

To the Renaissance, Vergil was the author not only of the 
Aeneid, but also of the Eclogues. All three of his poems 
were well known, but the Georgics did not come into their 
own until the eighteenth century. Nicholas Grimoald, 
it is true, made a paraphrase of them, which was printed 
in 1591, and a translation of the Bucolics and Georgics was 
published in 1589 by '*A. F." But there was nothing in 
England to correspond to the French and Italian imitations 
by Baif, Alamanni and Rucellai. Thomas Tusser's Five 



100 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

Hundreth Points of Good Husbandry, the only work in the 
century which might seem hke an imitation of the Georgics, 
evidently owes its maxims to no classical poet, but to the 
experience and common sense of the writer himself. The 
didacticism of the sixteenth century turned to other things 
beside agriculture. 

Spenser was the greatest figure of Elizabethan poetry, 
outside of the drama. His range of genius, greater than that 
of any other poet of the century except Shakespeare, covered 
practically all the phases of VergiHan influence then 
operative, that of the Eclogues in particular, and also that 
of the Aeneid and of the allegorical interpretation of the 
Aeneid. And his epic is an excellent illustration of the pecu- 
liar manner in which the writers of that romance-loving 
period adapted to their own uses an epic as formal as 
Vergil's poem. So, as he sums up the pastoral tradition 
and furnishes the models for many writers of the formal 
eclogue in succeeding generations, and as he is the greatest 
representative of the romantic treatment of the Aeneid, it 
will be well to focus our attention upon his use of Vergil, and 
let the practice of his contemporaries and followers illustrate 
and ampUfy the attitude which he represents. 

Of the various forms of the pastoral which developed in 
England in the sixteenth century, the pastoral drama, the 
prose romance, the lyric, and the formal eclogue, it is only 
the last which is to be considered here. For although they 
were obviously all derived ultimately from the classical 
models, in the case of the first three, the Greek and Latin 
influence lost most of its individuality in being filtered 
through the work of the Italian, French, and Spanish writers, 
to whom the pastoral poets of England owed such a large 
debt in form and substance. Even in the formal eclogue 
the writers of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Dante, 
Petrarch, Boccaccio, Sannazaro, Marot, and especially 



SPENSER AND THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 101 

Mantuan, introduced so many new elements that the 
" smooth-sHding Mincius" flows by no means clear and un- 
contaminated from its som-ce. Spenser's predecessors in 
England, Barclay and Googe, owe more to these Renaissance 
models than to Vergil, although an occasional echo of a 
Vergilian line shows that the originator of the form is not 
wholly forgotten. 

The Shepheardes Calender appeared anonymously in 1579, 
with a "glosse" written by a certain "E. K.," whose identity 
has caused much discussion. The elaborate commentaries 
which had gathered about the Eclogues of Vergil, explaining 
not only difficulties in the text but also allusions to con- 
temporary events and persons, both actual and supposed, 
had set the fashion for the addition of notes to the Renais- 
sance pastorals. Some, like Petrarch, wrote the com- 
mentaries themselves, and it has been said that "E. K." 
is no other than Spenser. But probably he was a friend 
of the poet, a certain Edward Kirke, who acted as inter- 
preter for "Immerito." At any rate, he knew his Vergil, 
and pointed out many passages which showed that Spenser 
was definitely following his classic master. Theocritus, 
however, he counts as of more authority than Vergil, "this 
especially from that deriving, as from the first head and 
wel-spring, the whole invencion of his Aeglogues." He 
misunderstands the Latin title which was always used, and 
says it was from the Greek, — " Aeglogai, as it were aiycov, 
or aiyovofjLwv Xoyot, that is, Goteheards tales." 

Spenser was familiar with the whole pastoral tradition 
from its Greek founders through the Latin, Italian, Spanish, 
and French writers, and he borrowed freely from all sources. 
He seems to have been original in his use of homely English 
names instead of the Greek or Latin conventional titles of 
the earlier and much of the later pastoral, and of a rustic 
dialect, which displeased Sidney. "That same framing 



102 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

of his stile, to an old rustick language, I dare not alowe, 
sith neyther Theocritus in Greeke, Virgill in Latine, nor 
Sanazar in Italian, did affect it." Thus he wrote, forgetting 
that Vergil himself had been criticized for his "cuium pecus." 
These homely and familiar touches lend an atmosphere of 
reality to the themes and forms borrowed from abroad, 
and make the song-contest of Theocritus and Vergil, the 
religious and moral satire of Mantuan, and the elegy of 
Marot seem almost native to English soil. 

Of the twelve eclogues, three are definitely modeled upon 
Mantuan, the July, the September and October, and one, the 
November, ''is made in imitation of Marot his song, which 
he made upon the death of Loys the Frenche Queene." 
In this, however, the Vergilian tradition shows itself per- 
petuated through the French, in the change from sorrow 
to joy at the thought that the loved one is not really dead, 
but, as Vergil expresses it, 

Candidas insuetum miratur limen Olympi 
sub pedibusque videt nubes et sidera. 

Although Spenser was definitely imitating Marot, he could 
not have failed to remember the Daphnis of Vergil when 
he wrote. 

Why wayle we then? why weary we the gods with playnts. 

As if some evill were to her betight? 

She raignes a goddesse now emong the saintes, 

That whilome was the saynt of shepheards light: 

And is enstalled nowe in heavens hight. 

The eclogues that deal with the love of Colin are more 
classical in form. The shepherd lad who "thus him playnd " 
is a familiar figure in both Theocritus and Vergil. Like 
Vergil's Corydon, Colin will 

seeke for queene apples unripe, 
To give my Rosalind, 



SPENSER AND THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 103 

and like Damon he expresses his jealousy of his successful 
rival. It is the August eclogue which is the most classical 
in form. Like the shepherds of Sicily and of the Mantuan 
plains, Willye and Perigot engage in a contest in song. 
The "Argument" says that this is an imitation of Theoc- 
ritus, but the mention of the third and seventh Eclogues 
of Vergil shows that "E. K." was not ignorant of the fact 
that the Roman tradition was influential here also. Willye 
pledges 

A mazer y wrought of the maple warre : 
Wherein is enchased many a fa5Te sight 
Of beres and tygres, that maken fiers warre; 
And over them spred a goodly wild vine, 
Entrailed with a wanton yvie-twine. 

Perigot in his turn offers a spotted lamb, the best of his flock. 
They call upon Cuddie to judge the contest, but at the close 
he is unable to decide between them, and like Palaemon in 
Vergil's third Eclogue, he awards a prize to each. The songs 
themselves are not classical in form, for instead of being in 
answering couplets or quatrains, of equal importance, 
Perigot's verses take the lead, and Willye's follow as a mere 
refrain or "undersong." Nor does the eclogue end with the 
judge's decision, for Cuddie himself sings a song which Colin 
has composed upon the subject of his hopeless love for Rosa- 
linde, for which Spenser had some justification in the ninth 
Idyll of Theocritus. 

Spenser introduces into his pastorals not only religious 
satire after the pattern of his Italian models, but also per- 
sonal allegory after the manner of Vergil and his followers. 
The name of Colin was only a thin disguise for Spenser him- 
self, whose love-affair with Rosalinde was well known. As 
Cuddie says, "Who knows not Rosalend?" "Menalcas," 
says "E. K.," is "the name of a shephearde in Virgile; but 
here is meant a person unknowne and secrete, agaynst 



104 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

whome he often bitterly invayeth," Hobbinol, Colin's friend 
and confidant, is Gabriel Harvey. This personal allusion 
is at its height in Colin ClouVs Come Home Againe, where 
Hobbinol again appears, and the Shepherd of the Ocean, 
ThestyUs, Harpalus, Corydon, Alcyon, old Palemon, and 
Astrofell; Stella, "Phyllis, Charillis and sweet Amaryllis," 
and the various other shepherds and nymphs, can be identi- 
fied with more or less certainty with the gentlemen and 
ladies who, with Spenser himself, owed allegiance to that 

great shepheardesse, that Cynthia hight, 
His liege, his ladie, and his lifes regent. 

Perhaps the most popular of all the forms of the pastoral 
was the dirge, and this Spenser used, not only in the Shep- 
heardes Calender, but in his Daphnaida and his Astrophel, 
although neither of these is in the strictly conventional 
classical form. The Pastor all Aeglogue by Lodowick Bryskett 
included in the collection entitled Astrophel, is a good ex- 
ample of this, with its conventional 

Phillisides is dead. happie sprite, 

That now in heav'n with blessed soules doest bide. 

Echoes of Vergil in Spenser's pastoral poems are fairly 
frequent. Most of those in the Shepheardes Calender are 
noted by ''E. K." in his gloss. '^His clownish gyfis," says 
the commentator, "imitateth Virgil's verse, 

'Rusticus es Corydon, nee munera curat Alexis.'" 

Thenot's emblem in the April eclogue, " O quam te memorem, 
virgo?" and Hobbinol's, "O dea certe," are said to have been 
taken from the passage in the Aeneid describing Aeneas' 
meeting with his mother, which is "most divinely set forth." 
He is also careful to explain the passage in the October 
eclogue which tells how the "Romish Titynis" 



SPENSER AND THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 105 

left his oaten reede, 
Whereon he earst had taught his flocks to feede, 
And laboured lands to yield the timely eare, 
And eft did sing of warres and deadly drede, 
So as the heavens did quake his verse to here, 

as referring to the Aeglogues, the Bucoliques, and the "divine 
Aeneis." He also mentions the lines, 

For als at home I have a syre, 
A stepdame eke, as whott as fyre, 
That dewly adayes counts mine, 

which is Menalcas' excuse for refusing to stake one of his 
flock in his song-contest with Damoetas: 

est mihi namque domi pater, est iniusta noverca; 
bisque die numerant ambo pecus, alter et haedos. 

In Colin Clout's Come Home Againe, there are two reminis- 
cences of the familiar verses of Vergil's first Eclogue, 

tu, Tityre, lentus in umbra 
formosam resonare doces Amaryllida silvas, 

especially marked in the lines, 

The speaking woods and murmuring waters fall, 
Her name He teach in knowen termes to frame. 

But who can say whether the ever-recurring ending of the 
pastoral, both in Spenser's work and in that of other writers 
of the eclogue, is due to Vergil's 

ite domum saturae, venit Hesperus, ite capellae, 

or to Mantuan's 

sed iam Vesper adest et sol se in nube recondens, 
dum cadit, agricolis vicinos nuntiat imbres; 
cogere et ad caulas pecudes convertere tempus? 



106 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

In the work of the majority of those who followed Spenser 
in the writing of the pastoral, there is little trace of pure 
Vergilian influence. Their model is usually Colin and not 
Tityrus, and the eclogue as exemplified in Peele's Welcome 
to the Earl of Essex, in Drayton's Shepherd's Garland, in 
Basse's Three Pastoral Eclogues and his Clio, in Browne's 
Shepherd's Pipe, in Brathwaite's- Shepheards Tales, or in 
Wither's Shepherd's Hunting, is removed by many degrees 
of relationship from the eclogue of Vergil. In general they 
keep the form of a dialogue between shepherds or a mournful 
soliloquy of a love-sick swain; they develope to its fullest 
possibilities the personal allegory or the religious satire. In 
this last is shown the persistence of the influence of Mantuan, 
especially strong in Sable's Pan's Pipe and the Eclogues 
included in Lodge's Fig for Momus. The crowning extrava- 
gance in the use of the pastoral form for the purpose of 
exposing the corruption of the Church is found in Francis 
Quarles' Shepheards Oracles of 1646. 

In some cases there are indications, however, that the 
writer was going back to the fountain-head for his inspira- 
tion. Richard Barnfield wrote his Affectionate Shepherd in 
obvious elaboration of Vergil's Alexis, and he joined with his 
love for his Roman model a genuine love for the country, 
further exhibited in the Shepherd's Content, which sets 
forth the advantages of a rural life. Phineas Fletcher's 
allegiance was divided. In his Purple Island, which itself 
has a pastoral setting, the account of the island being put 
into the mouth of the shepherd Thirsil, he says, 

Two shepherds most I love, with just adoring. 
That Mantuan swain, who chang'd his slender reed, 
To trumpet's martial voice, and war's loud roaring, 
From Corydon to Turnus' daring deed; 

And next our home-bred Colin sweetest firing; 

Their steps not following close, but far admiring; 
To lackey one of these, is all my pride's aspiring. 



SPENSER AND THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 107 

In this curious poem, the influence of Spenser is very strong, 
especially in the detailed descriptions of the allegorical 
figures of the Virtues and Vices, and of their battles for the 
possession of the Isle of Man. But incidental echoes of 
Vergil and references to him are frequent. The Roman 
poet is superior to his Greek models both in epic and in 
pastoral : 

Who has not often read Troy's twice sung fires, 

And at the second time twice better sung? 

Who has not heard the Arcadian shepherd's quires, 

Which now have gladly chang'd their native tongue; 
And sitting by slow Mincius, sport their fill, 
With sweeter voice and never-equalled skill, 

Chanting their amorous lays unto a Roman quill? 

There is an echo of the close of the last Eclogue, 

Home then, my full fed lambs; the night comes, home apace, 

or of the invocation of the Aeneid, 

Tell me, oh tell me then, thou holy Muse! 
Sacred Thespio ! what the cause may be 
Of such despite, 

or an imitation of a Vergilian simile, 

But like a mighty rock, whose unmov'd sides 
The hostile sea assaults with furious wave. . . . 
Such was this knight's undaunted constancy.' 

Or it may be a reminiscence of the glorification of country 
life in the second Georgic, in the passage beginning, 

Thrice, oh, thrice happy shepherd's life and state. 

Fletcher's Piscatory Eclogues show the influence of several 
of his predecessors. They include the love-lament and 
2 Cf. Aen. 10. 693-6. Also cf. Tennyson's Will 



108 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

song-contest of the classic poets and Spenser, and the dis- 
cussion of the corruption of the clergy of Mantuan and 
Spenser, transferred to the atmosphere which surrounds the 
fisher-folk of Sannazaro. But the music of that "sweeter 
voice" and the "Roman quill" is still sounding in his ears, 
and Thelgon and Thomalin and Myrtilus, although they 
live by the sea and do not tend flocks upon the plains, often 
speak through the lips of Tityrus. Especially is this true 
in the seventh Eclogue, The Prize, which records a contest 
in song between Daphnis, the representative of the shep- 
herds, and Thomalin, the champion of the fishermen. Their 
songs, alternis versibus, are concerned with the time-honored 
topics of the beauty of their sweethearts, the gifts they have 
brought them, the patronage of the gods, and the rival 
claims of certain trees favored by their mistresses or their 
patron deities. 

A multiplicity of influences is evident also in Milton's 
Lycidas,* the most perfect example in English of the 
pastoral elegy raised to a lyrical height hitherto unat- 
tained. Here appears St. Peter, who had figured in one 
of Petrarch's eclogues under the name of Pamphilus, and 
the whole terrible indictment of the 

Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold 
A sheep-hook, or have learnt aught else the least 
That to the faithful Herdman's art belongs, 

is a direct inheritance from the ecclesiastical pastorals of 
the humanists and of Spenser and their other English imi- 
tators. The writers of religious eclogues naturally seized 
upon the pastoral imagery of the Messianic prophecies and 
the Gospels as a justfication of their use of the word pastor 
in its double sense. But Milton's inheritance was from 

* This earlier portion of Milton's work may be discussed more prof- 
itably here than in the next chapter. 



SPENSER AND THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 109 

the classics as well as from the Renaissance. Theocritus 
and Vergil were his models in the general scheme of the elegy, 
in the representation of King and his friends as shepherds 
singing for "old Damoetas," and in the change from the 
minor key of mourning to the shout of triumph at the end; 
and it is hard to distinguish the waters of the "fountain 
Arethuse" from those of the "smooth-shding Mincius.' 
Also who can tell whether he is thinking of his Greek or Latin 
model when he asks , 

Who would not sing for Lycidas? 

or reproaches the Nymphs for their absence at the time of his 
death? Yet in the line, 

Phoebus replied, and touched my trembling ears, 

or in the lines of Comus, 

Two such I saw what time the laboured ox 
In his loose traces from the furrow came, 

and in the Elder Brother's greeting to the Attendant Spirit 

Thyrsis! whose artful strains have oft delayed 
The huddUng brook to hear his madrigal, 

there are obvious reminiscences of Vergil. And Milton 
has adopted the closing verse of the first Eclogue, 

maioresque cadunt altis de montibus umbrae, 

and expressed the thought with equal beauty and simplic- 
ity in his last lines, 

And now the sun had stretched out all the hills. 
And now was dropped into the western bay. 
At last he rose, and twitched his mantle blue: 
To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new. 

The influence of the Aeneid is not so definite and clear-cut 



110 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

in the Renaissance as that of the Eclogues. It was in the 
seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries that the Aeneid 
was regarded as the typical classical epic, and used as a 
model for native productions. In the sixteenth century 
its popularity is to be traced not so much in the perpetua- 
tion of the type, as in the incidental imitations of episode 
and language, as in Sackville's Induction, the drama, and 
Spenser's Faerie Queene. 

It was really as a romance that Spenser saw the story of 
Aeneas, not as a model in form and style, although, as we 
shall see later, he endeavored to attain the requisite epic 
unity by plunging in medias res. But he practically threw 
the classical structure and the classical manner to the 
winds, and adopted those portions of the narrative which 
appealed to his romantic sense — the story of Polydorus, 
the allegorical figures at the gate of the Underworld, and 
the description of La vinia's blush, with its vivid touch of color. 
In the first stanzas of the Faerie Queene, Spenser gives 
promise of Vergilian imitation which he did not fulfill. 
He was evidently conscious and wished his readers to be 
conscious that he, like Vergil, was passing from pastoral to 
epic, and that, like Vergil in Augustan Rome, he was the 
founder of a new type of poetry for Elizabethan England. 
For he begins the poem with a stanza which frankly copies 
the opening of the Aeneid, with its four disputed introductory 
lines. 

Lo ! I the man, whose Muse whylome did maske, 

As time her taught, in lowly shephards weeds, 

Am now enforst, a farre unfitter taske, 

For trumpets sterne to chaunge mine oaten reeds. 

And sing of knights and ladies gentle deeds ; 

Whose praises having slept in silence long, 

Me, all too meane, the sacred Muse areeds 

To blazon broade emongst her learned throng; 

Fierce warres and faithful! loves shall moralize my song. 



SPENSER AND THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 111 

Also in his dedicatory sonnet to Sir Francis Walsingham, 
he calls that knight the "Mecenas of this age," and com- 
pares himself to the "Mantuane poete." 

This lowly Muse, that learns like steps to trace. 
Flies for like aide unto your patronage. 

It is not to the example of Vergil alone, however, that he 
appeals in the famous letter to Sir Walter Raleigh, to justify 
his allegorical plan. "In which," he says, "I have followed 
all the antique poets historicall: first Homere, who in 
the persons of Agamemnon and Ulysses hath ensampled 
a good governour and a vertuous man, the one in his Ilias, 
the other in his Odysseis; then Virgil, whose like intention 
was to doe in the person of Aeneas ; after him Ariosto com- 
prised them both in his Orlando ; and lately Tasso dissevered 
them againe, and formed both parts in two persons, namely 
that part which they in philosophy call Ethice, or vertues of 
a private man, coloured in his Rinaldo; the other named 
PoHtice in his Godfredo." Thus not only the epics of 
antiquity but the romances of the Renaissance were before 
his mind as he planned his work. It was with an obvious 
effort to combine the two that he laid out the scheme of 
his poem. Undoubtedly the romance attracted him more 
strongly, with its chivalric tone, and its outward beauty of 
color and perhaps its greater opportunity for allegorical treat- 
ment. Indeed, he himself had said that it was his purpose 
to follow Ariosto, as a letter from Gabriel Harvey proves. 
He wrote in 1580 in reply to a letter from Spenser asking 
his opinion of his plan, "I am voyde of al judgement, if 
your Nine Comoedies . . . come not neerer Ariostoes 
comoedies . . . than that Elvish Queene doth to his Orlando 
Furioso, which, notwithstanding, you wil needes seeme to 
emulate, and hope to overgo, as you flatly professed your 
self in one of your last letters." And so the poem is, in 



112 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

reality, a romance, with the great British hero of romance 
as its central figure, with all the romantic characteristics 
of detailed descriptions and chivalric adventures and knightly- 
combats. The battles of the Red Crosse Knight or of Sir 
Guyon are not those of Achilles or Aeneas, nor are the 
descriptions of Una or Duessa or Britomart like the pictures 
which the poets of antiquity drew of Helen or Dido or Camilla 
or Fame. He might have had in mind the mediaeval ro- 
mances of Troy and Aeneas, but not the original Greek and 
Latin. Neither is the movement that of a classical epic. 
There is a certain unity secured by linking together all 
the books by the appearance of the figure of Arthur, but it is 
not the essential unity of the story of the adventures of 
Odysseus or of Aeneas. The real interest of the reader is 
centered, not on Arthur, but on the hero of the particular 
book, and the point to which he looks forward is the outcome 
of the adventure of Sir Guyon or of Britomart, and not the 
end of the Prince's search for his Faerie Queene. It is pos- 
sible that this would have been somewhat changed if Spenser 
had finished his colossal task, and had brought us at last 
back to the court of Gloriana; but with the materials at 
hand and the plan which we know he had, of representing 
twelve separate virtues, he never could have achieved true 
epic unity. His action could not have been either "one" 
or "entire" although it was "great." 

It was clearly his desire, however, to emulate the classic 
epic poets in the structure of his poem, and he evidently 
felt that this could be done by following Horace's rule 
for plunging in medias res. This he explains in his letter 
to Raleigh: "For an historiographer discourseth of affayres 
orderly as they were donne, accounting as well the times as 
the actions; but a poet thrusteth into the middest, even 
where it most concerneth him, and there recoursing to the 
thinges forepaste, and divining of thinges to come, maketh 



SPENSER AND THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 113 

a pleasing analysis of all." He has, however, left his ac- 
count of the "thinges forepa^te" too long, planning to 
close his poem with the explanation which the reader needs 
at the beginning, or at least as near the beginning as it is 
put by Homer or Vergil. Hence he feels the necessity of 
writing an introductory letter, which rather hinders than 
helps in "gathering the whole intention of the conceit," 
and does nothing toward improving the epic unity of the 
poem. 

It is impossible therefore to say that the Faerie Queene is 
Homeric or Vergilian in structure. We have seen, however, 
that Spenser had the classic poets in mind, and it is natural to 
assume that imitations and echoes of Vergil are numerous. 
Any detailed discussion of this, however, would degenerate 
into a mere compilation of parallel passages. Their impor- 
tance lies in the nature of the passages chosen for imitation. 
It is not burning Troy that attracts the poet, nor the funeral 
games of Anchises, nor the epic combat of Turnus and Aeneas, 
but such incidents and pictures as are suitable to his romantic 
story. Spenser shows his familiarity with the story of the 
Aeneid in Paridell's abstract of the narrative, though it 
serves only as an introduction to Britomart's reminder of 
the founding of Troynovant by Brute. The first elaborate 
reminiscence of the Aeneid in the Faerie Queene is in the 
adventure of the Red Crosse Knight and Fidessa with the 
bleeding tree. They sat down under the shadow of two 
trees, and the Knight, to make a garland for the lady, tried 
to break off a branch. 

He pluckt a bough; out of whose rift there came 
Smal drops of gory bloud, that trickled down the same. 

Therewith a piteous yelling voice was heard, 
Crying, "0 spare with guilty hands to teare 
My tender sides in this rough rynd embard; 



114 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

But fly, ah! fly far hence away, for feare 

Least to you hap that happened to me heare, 

And to this wretched lady, my deare love; 

O too deare love, love bought with death too deare!" 

Astond he stood, and up his heare did hove, 

And with that suddein horror could no member move.^ 

Although the story of Fradubio was not like that of Poly- 
dorus, these are almost the very words that Aeneas heard 
on the shores of Thrace from the tomb of Priam's murdered 
son. Another equally close resemblance is that between 
the meeting of Belphoebe and Trompart in the forest and 
the encounter of Aeneas with his mother after landing in 
Africa. Belphoebe thus accosts Trompart, 

Hayle groome! didst not thou see a bleeding hind? 

and he replies, 

O goddesse, (for such I thee take to bee; 
For nether doth thy face terrestriall shew, 
Nor voj^ce sound mortall) I avow to thee. 
Such wounded beast as that I did not see, 
Sith earst into this forrest wild I came.® 

With the figures of Payne, Revenge, Despight, Treason, 
Hate, Feare, and the other allegorical personages which Sir 
Guyon saw at the entrance to "Plutoes griesly rayne," 
we may compare those which Aeneas saw at the mouth of 
Hades. Although the list is not the same, and the existence 
of similar figures in allegories of the type of the Roman de 
la Rose may have had some influence on Spenser here, the 

5 Faerie Queene, I. 2. 30 fif. Cf. Aen. 3. 24-48. Cf. also Ariosto, 
Orl. Fur. 6. 26 ff. and Dante, Inf. 13. But Spenser's model, in thought 
and language, is evidently Vergil. 

« F. Q. II. 3. 32, 33. Cf. Aen. 1. 314-334. 



SPENSER AND THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 115 

Vergilian account must surely have been in the poet's mind, 
especially in view of the lines, 

Whiles sad Celeno sitting in a clifte, 
A song of bale and bitter sorrow sings, 

which call up an essentially Vergilian picture.' 

The image of the eagle of Jove carrying off Ganymede, 
while the shepherds stand staring after him, is undoubtedly 
copied from Vergil, and the description of the Gulfe of 
Greedinesse and the Rock of Vile Reproche opposite it is 
reminiscent of Vergil's Scylla and Charybdis. Besides these 
more elaborate resemblances, there are many similarities 
in briefer passages, in single lines or phrases, such as the 
description of the gates of sleep, which are of ivory and silver, 
of the "snake in hidden weedes," of Belphoebe, 

Such as Diana by the sandy shore 

Of swift Eurotas, or on Cynthus greene, 

the picture of Aetna, the comparison of the blushing cheek 
of a maiden to roses mixed with lilies or to ivory overlaid 
with vermilion, and the use of the figure of the weary team 
to conclude a canto of the Faerie Queene or a book of the 
Georgics, 

But here my wearie teeme, nigh overspent, 
Shall breathe itself awhile, after so long a went.* 

The epic simile is put to good use by Spenser, and many of 
the comparisons have a true Vergilian ring. Such, for 

' F. Q. II. 7. 21 ff. Cf. Aen. 6. 273-81 and 3. 245-6. 

« Cf. F. Q. III. 11. 34 and Aen. 5. 252-7; F. Q. II. 12. 3, 4, Aen. 3. 
420-432; F. Q. I. 1. 40, Aen. 6. 893-6; F. Q. I. 9. 28, II. 5. 34, Ed. 3. 
92; F. Q. II. 3. 31, Aen. 1. 498-9; F. Q. I. 11. 44, Aen. 3. 570 ff; F. Q. 
II. 3. 22, V. 3. 23, Aen. 12. 68-9; F. Q. IV. 5. 46, Georg. 2. 541 f. 
It is interesting to notice that the majority of the Vergilian imitations 
are found in the earUer books of the Faerie Queene. 



116 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

example, is the image of the fall of an aged tree or the rush 
of a loosened rock down the mountainside, the comparison 
of Una and the morning star, the description of the flood 
that descends 

And the sad husbandmans long hope doth throw 
A downe the streame, 

the comparison of the knight to a snake that has cast its skin, 
and the picture of the battle of the bulls, which is a favorite 
with both poets. ^ 

These are the choices of a romance-lover. But the roman- 
tic figure of Dido is conspicuously absent, perhaps merely 
by chance, perhaps because the concentrated passion of 
the deserted queen would be incongruous in this leisurely 
narrative, and we may give Spenser the credit of having 
been unwilling to bring her down from the heights of tragedy 
as Chaucer had done. But his contemporaries were not 
so careful. 

The tragic story of Dido had been dramatized as early 
as the days of the Roman emperors, and had furnished the 
theme of Renaissance plays on the continent both in Latin 
and in the vernaculars, as in the work of Dolce and Jodelle. 
The sixteenth century in England saw the production of 
four versions of her passion and death. Three of these 
were school or university plays, two of which are not now 
extant. Some time between 1522 and 1531, John Ritwise, 
the master of St. Paul's School, "made the Tragedy of Dido 
out of Virgil," and with his pupils acted it on the occasion 
of a visit from Cardinal Wolsey. In 1564, EUzabeth stopped 
at Oxford, and on August 7, a play of Dido, in Latin hexam- 
eters, written by Edward Halliwell, a fellow of King's College, 
was performed in her honor. We have the word of a con- 

9 Cf. F. Q. I. 8. 22, Aen. 5. 448 f; F. Q. I. 11. 54, Aen. 12. 684 ff. 
F. Q. I. 12. 21, Aen. 8. 589 ff; F. Q. II. 11. 18, Aen. 2. 304 ff; F. Q. IV; 
3. 23, Aen. 2. 471 ff ; F. Q. IV. 4. 18, Aen. 12. 715 ff, Gearg. 3. 219 ff. 



SPENSER AND THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 117 

temporary, Nicholas Robinson, that it was a "novum opus 
sed venustum et elegans." Neither of these plays has sur- 
vived the lapse of time, but there is at Christ's Church a 
unique manuscript of a play of Dido by Wilham Gager. 
This was produced in 1583, when Albertus Alasco, Prince 
Palatine of Siradia in Poland, was visiting the English 
Elisa, and the subject was doubtless thought very appro- 
priate. It was a curious mixture of a pageant and a Senecan 
tragedy. It combined an elaborate stage setting of storm 
and banquet and death scene, with the characteristic Senecan 
rhetoric and sententiousness, the stichomythia, and the ap- 
pearance of the ghost of Sichaeus. Much of the wording 
is taken from the Aeneid, but the hexameters are tortured 
into neo-classical iambics, and hence lose their dignity and 
sonorousness. Associated with Gager in the production of 
the play, was George Peele, who later followed Vergil 
rather closely in the last part of his poem. The Tale of 
Troy, from the building of the wooden horse through the 
adventures of Aeneas. 

In 1594 was pubHshed The Tragedie of Dido Queene of 
Carthage: Played hy the Children of her Maiesties Chappell. 
Written by Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Nash. Gent. 
This was a true romantic drama, with its touches of humor 
in the parts of Cupid and the Nurse, and its complication 
of the tragedy by introducing the love of Anna for larbas. 
The Elizabethan love of a multiplicity of deaths at the end 
of a play is thus satisfied, for larbas stabs himself at the 
funeral pyre of Dido and Anna then takes her own life. 
Also the gruesome additions to the story which Aeneas tells 
of the last night of Troy are evidently made to comply 
with the demand of the audience for horrors. Elizabethan 
too are the extravagantly luscious descriptions, the senti- 
mental additions to the discussion by Aeneas, Achates, 
and Ascanius of the pictures of Troy on the walls of the 



118 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

Temple of Juno, and such romantic touches as those in 

the un-Vergihan speeches of Dido and Aeneas teUing of their 

love for each other. These lines, for instance, put into the 

mouth of Dido, have and could have no counterpart in 

Vergil '. 

I'll make me bracelets of his golden hair; 

His glist'ring eyes shall be my looking-glass, 

I / His lips an altar, where I'll offer up 

As many kisses as the sea hath sands. 

But if we leave these things out of account, the two 
dramatists have followed the narrative of the Aeneid very 
closely, and in many places have introduced into the dialogue 
what is virtually a translation of the Latin. Jupiter's 
prophecy to Venus, the conversation between Venus and 
Aeneas in the forest, Ilioneu^' appeal for hospitality at 
Carthage, the plot of Juno to bring about the marriage, 
the prayer of larbas, the message of Mercury to Aeneas, 
Dido's remonstrances and her final curse, are the chief 
instances, but there are many brief passages which are 
taken straight from the Aeneid. In the last act, where 
the Vergilian influence is especially marked. Dido and 
Aeneas several times break into Latin hexameters. Dido's 
curse is a good illustration: 

And now, ye gods, that guide the starry frame, 
And order all things at your high dispose. 
Grant, though the traitors land in Italy, 
They may be still tormented with unrest; 
And from mine ashes, let a conqueror rise, 
That may revenge tliis treason to a queen, 
By ploughing up his countries with the sword. 
Betwixt this land and that be never league, 
Littora littorihus contraria, fluctibus undas 
Imprecor; arma armis: pugnent ipsique nepotes: 
Live false Aeneas! truest Dido dies! 
Sic, sic juvat ire svb umbras. 



SPENSER AND THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 119 

Thomas Heywood's Iron Age similarly makes use of 
Vergilian hexameters. The second act of the second part 
of the play represents the scene on the seashore, when 
Sinon's wily words induce the Trojans, in spite of Laocoon's 
advice, to bring the wooden horse inside the city, and also 
depicts the terror and confusion within the walls after the 
Greeks have begun their work of destruction. The ghost 
of Hector appears in pursuit of Aeneas, and when he is 
finally recognized, exhorts the future founder of the Roman 
race to escape from Troy. After paraphrasing the lines, 

sat patriae Priamoque datum: si Pergama dextra 
defendi possent, etiam hac defensa fuissent, 

he closes with the following Latin verses, which are copied 
from the Aeneid, with the alteration of only one word: 

Heu fuge nate Dea; teque his pater eripe flammis; 
Hostis habet muros, ruit alto a culmine Troia 
Sacra, suosque tibi commendat Troia penates. 
Hos cape fatorum comites, his moenia quaere, 
Magna pererrato statues quae denique ponto.^" 

The next act carries the story on through the scenes on 
the last night of Troy, introducing the Cassandra-Coroebus 
episode and the death of Priam, all with a certain measure 
of imitation and paraphrase of the Vergilian account. 
Aeneas plays a very small part in the Iron Age, however, 
and the only references to his adventures after the fall of 
Troy are in Cassandra's early prophecy of the rearing of 
another Ihum and Ulysses' report after the Greeks have 
taken possession of the city, 

Aeneas, with twenty two ships well furnish'd, . . . 
Is fled to sea. 

" Cf. Aen. 2. 289-95. 



120 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

These plays are the only examples of any extensive use 
of the story of the Aeneid in Elizabethan drama. There 
are, however, many indications of a knowledge of Vergil. 
The Pedant in the University plays frequently quotes him 
together with other classical writers, and there are quota- 
tions and allusions in many of the stage plays. 

The atmosphere of mediaeval romance rather than of the 
Aeneid clings round such a passage as that in the Merchant 
of Venice, 

In such a night 
Stood Dido with a willow in her hand 
Upon the wild sea banks, and waft her love 
To come again to Carthage, 

and it is obvious that of the two great narrative poets of 
Rome, Ovid is far the more congenial to Shakespeare, and 
far more frequently imitated by him. The whole question 
as to whether Shakespeare knew any classic poet in the 
original, or whether he was depending upon translations, 
is a very vexed one. Without going to one extreme with 
Upton and Whalley, and marshalling a large number of 
parallel passages to prove Shakespeare's intimate knowledge 
of the classics, or to the other extreme with Farmer, who 
denied the least particle of classical information to the poet, 
we may steer a middle course and take Ben Jonson's "little 
Latin and less Greek" at its face value. As Spencer Baynes 
argues, if Shakespeare attended the Stratford Grammar 
School, where in all probability a fair training in Latin was 
given and the chief Roman writers of prose and poetry 
were read, he must have carried away with him at least a 
working knowledge of the Roman tongue, "little" though 
it might seem to Jonson's scholarly mind, and a familiarity 
with Vergil's great masterpiece. It may be assumed that 
the references to the story of the Aeneid, few though they 



SPENSER AND THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 121 

be, even the reference quoted above with its essentially 
romantic flavor, and the instances where Shakespeare seems 
to be echoing Vergilian language, are due to a first-hand 
knowledge of the poem, and not to a familiarity merely 
with Douglas' or Surrey's translation. These echoes also 
are few in number. Among them may be mentioned the 
line from the Tempest, 

Great Juno comes: I know her by her gait, 

and the speech by Aegon in the Comedy of Errors, beginning, 
A heavier task could not have been imposed. 

The details in the picture of the fall of Troy in the Rape of 
Lucrece are also probably taken partly from the second 
book of the Aeneid itself, especially those in the following 
hues: 

Till she despairing Hecuba beheld, 

Staring on Priam's wounds with her old eyes. 
Which bleeding under Pyrrhus' proud foot lies. 



At last she sees a wretched image bound, 
That piteous looks to Phrygian shepherds lent: 
His face, though full of cares, yet show'd content; 
Onward to Troy with the blunt swains he goes, 
So mild that Patience seem'd to scorn his woes. 



Look, look, how listening Priam wets his eyes, 
To see those borrow'd tears that Sinon sheds. 

With the first of these quotations should be compared the 
speech quoted in the second act of Hamlet, from "Aeneas' 
tale to Dido; and thereabout of it especially, where he 
speaks of Priam's slaughter." These lines, Coleridge said, 
" as epic narrative, are superb," but it is easier to believe 
that the whole speech is a burlesque of the somewhat lurid 



122 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

description of Priam's death in the second act of Marlowe's 
Dido. 

To the work of Shakespeare's predecessors and con- 
temporaries in the drama Vergil contributes his share of 
references and allusions, from the time of that in Jacke 
Jugeler, 

I think he be Dares, of whom Virgil doth write, 

That would not let Entellus alone. 

But ever provoked and ever called on, 

But yet at the last he took a fall, 

And so within a while I trow I make thee shall, 

to that of such echoes as those in the following lines from 
Antonio and Mellida: 

Ant. Both cried, "Revenge!" At which my trembling joints. 
Iced quite over with a frozed cold sweat, 
Leap'd forth the sheets. Three times I grasp'd at shades. 
And thrice, deluded by erroneous sense, 
I forc'd my thoughts make stand. 

Ben Jonson's comprehensive borrowings from the classics 
do not fail to include VergiHan echoes. The influence of 
Vergil is evident, not only in the Poetaster, with its intro- 
duction of the poet in person upon the stage, and its rather 
rough translation of a portion of the fourth book of the Aeneid, 
but in his other plays and masques. Lady Haughty, the 
head of the college in The Silent Woman, echoes a passage 
of the Georgics when she says, "The best of our days pass 
first," and in Every Man in His Humour, Wellbred exclaims, 
" Oh, Master Matthew, that's a grace peculiar but to a few, 
Quos aequus amavit Jupiter." In the Masque of Queens 
appears Fame "as Virgil describes her, at the full, her feet 
on the ground, and her head in the clouds," and also 

Swift-foot Camilla, Queen of Volscia. 



SPENSER AND THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE 123 

The Hue and Cry after Cupid contains many references to 
Aeneas, with whom, in point of "piety, justice, prudence 
and all other princely virtues," says Jonson, *'I confer my 
sovereign." In the Speeches at Prince Henry's Barriers is 
the following line, with its Vergilian echo: 

As if whole islands had broke loose and swam; 

and in the Staple of News, Pennyboy Junior describes the 
effects of his love in imagery borrowed from the eighth 
book of the Aeneid: 

My passion was clear contrary, and doubtful, 
I shook for fear, and yet I danced for joy, 
I had such motions as the sunbeams make 
Against a wall, or playing on a water, 
Or trembling vapom* of a boiling pot.^^ 

In his Palladis Tamia, Francis Meres wrote, "As Homer 
and Virgil among the Greeks and Latines are the chief Hero- 
icke Poets: so Spencer and Warner be our chiefe heroicall 
Makers." But Warner and Drayton and Daniel, who are 
more nearly classical in the form of their epics, although as 
far as chronology goes they belong with Spenser, may be 
more profitably considered in the next chapter, in connection 
with the classical epic of Milton. 

" Cf. Aen. 8. 22-25. 



CHAPTER VI 
MILTON AND THE CLASSICAL EPIC 

It is as difficult to define the influence of Vergil on the 
seventeenth century as a whole, as it is to classify the literary 
activity of the century in general. It was a period of 
political unrest and upheaval and readjustment, and of 
literary decadence and development, a period of transition 
from the freedom of the "spacious days" of Queen Elizabeth 
to the restrictions of the pseudo-classical school. The 
early part of the century saw not only the continuation of 
Elizabethan traditions, in which the romantic license and 
extravagance were carried to excess, but also the classical 
reaction of Ben Jonson, with his formulation of the "rules" 
for dramatic and epic poetry, and the beginning of the 
classic school in meter and diction under Waller. 

But amid these shifting sands, there was one bit of solid 
ground in which every man of letters had fastened an anchor, 
small or great, — the knowledge of the classics. No matter 
what his views might be on the subject of form, each man 
had been trained in the reading of the classics, and was 
probably a facile performer in exercises in Latin verse and 
prose. The grammar schools of the period aimed to give 
each boy a thorough education in that ancient tongue before 
he reached the university, and to put him through a course 
of discipline which was intended to produce an accom- 
plished writer of letters, themes, verses and orations in the 
language of Cicero and Vergil. The mechanical apparatus 
for such a complete and thorough training was easily avail- 
able, for grammars, lexicons and texts had multiplied during 

124 



MILTON AND THE CLASSICAL EPIC 125 

the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and much 
good critical work had been done abroad. Some of the 
greatest names in classical scholarship belong to this period, 
and in Holland especially was gathered a group of scholars 
such as Vossius, and Daniel and Nikolaas Heinsius, whose 
reputation and influence were international, and who were 
in touch with John Selden and other English scholars. 

The emphasis in the classical training of this century was 
placed on the practical use of Latin in writing, for it was 
still the language of learned men everywhere, and the only 
tongue sure to be universally understood. Scientific prose, 
like that of Bacon and Harvey and even of Newton, as late 
as 1687, was written in Latin, although in some cases, as 
in that of the Advancement of Learning, there was an English 
version as well. The Latin verse of men like Milton and 
Cowley was by no means a mere academic exercise, but a 
mode of expression universally acceptable and intelligible. 
It is significant of the general familiarity with Latin that 
Kynaston translated Chaucer's Troilus and Cressida into 
Latin, that it might have an international circulation. 

With this dexterity in the use of Latin, and the system 
of translation and re-translation in the class-room by which 
the result was secured, there was no possibility of ignorance 
of the masterpieces of Roman literature. And the work 
of Vergil, who was called "incomparable" by Ben Jonson, 
the classicist, and was placed far above his Greek masters 
by Phineas Fletcher, the writer of moral allegory after 
the pattern of Spenser, and was imitated in his Praise of 
Spring by Richard Crashaw, the prince of the contrivers of 
conceits, could not fail to leave its mark on all the literature 
of the period, in one form or another. It was a period when 
even a band of idle young gallants knew their Vergil well 
enough to adopt the name of the ''Tityre-tu's." 

Naturally his influence on the lyric poets was compara- 



126 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

tively slight. Jonson and Herrick were indebted rather to 
Horace and Catullus and Anacreon for form and subject- 
matter, although their early practice in Vergilian hexam- 
eters may well have helped to give artistic polish to their 
verses, and they had assimilated much Vergilian lore that 
showed itself in incidental allusion and reference. It is 
easy to find examples of this, such as Herrick's phrases, 
"Cynthius, pluck ye by the ear," or "a wood of darts," 
or Jonson's references to the voyage of Aeneas in his Epi- 
gram On the Famous Voyage, and The Voyage Itself, in 
which the adventure is concluded 

Sans help of Sibyl, or a golden bough. 

Or there is more elaborate imitation, as in the poem of 
Crashaw mentioned above, or William Drummond of Haw- 
thomden's River of Forth Feasting, which is full of echoes 
of the tone of the Pollio, as in the lines beginning, 

Let Mother Earth now deck'd with flowers be seen, 
And sweet-breath'd zephyrs curl the meadows green, 
Let heaven weep rubies in a crimson shower, 

and of the fifth Eclogue in 

To virgins, flowers; to sunburnt earth, the rain; 
To mariners, fair winds amidst the main; 
Cool shades to pilgrims, whom hot glances bum. 
Are not so pleasing as thy blest return. 

And Cowley, whose Mistress belongs with the other examples 
of the early seventeenth century love of conceits, and who 
chose for the motto of that volume, haeret lateri lethalis 
arundo, says in his poem Sleep, 

Let her but grant, and then will I 
Thee and thy Kinsman Death defy, 



MILTON AND THE CLASSICAL EPIC 127 

and in The Heart Fled Again, devotes a stanza to the story 
of Dido : 

Even so the gentle Tyrian Dame, 

When neither Grief nor Love prevail, 
Saw the dear object of her flame, 
Th' ingrateful Trojan hoist his sail: 
Aloud she call'd to him to stay; 
The wind bore him, and her lost words away. 

The continuation of the pastoral tradition through the 
early portion of the century has already been spoken 
of, and Milton's part in it has been discussed.^ It 
would be natural, in a man of Milton's comprehensive 
learning and thorough scholarship to find the poet who 
would set the standard for the imitation of Vergil. And 
in a sense he did, but it was a standard too far above and 
too far apart from the capabilities of the other minds of the 
period. As in his Ode on the Nativity, he showed himself 
touched by the contemporary fondness for conceits, but 
used them in a way that raised this juvenile poem far above 
those by any of his fellow-concettists, so in his use of the 
conventional pastoral elegy he struck a lyric note of which 
none of his predecessors had given even a hint. And his 
place at the culmination of the development of the classical 
epic is one at such heights above his nearest competitor, 
that there is no comparison in the matter of actual achieve- 
ment between them. Thus he reflected three of the most 
important tendencies in the seventeenth century, but he 
was in no sense typical of them. His "soul was like a star 
and dwelt apart." 

The early work of Milton, except for his Lycidas, shows 
little Vergilian influence. His Latin poetry is clearly 
O vidian in style rather than Vergilian, and he several times 

1 Chapter V. 



128 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

definitely expresses his preference for the later poet. In 
his first Elegy, writing of his own "exile," he voices the wish 
that Ovid had never suffered worse exile than he, in which 
case, 

Non tunc lonio quicquam cessisset Homero, 
Neve foret victo laus tibi prima, Maro. 

Yet he naturally has a few Vergilian echoes in his Latin, as 
for example in this same Elegy, in the sentence, "Quid sit 
amor nescit," and in the list of dreadful figures that sit in 
the cave of Murder and Treachery and the description of 
Rumor in the verses In Quintum Novembris. 

On the whole, Milton's classicism is of a Greek nature 
rather than a Latin. The classical allusions in his minor 
poems are generally of Hellenic origin, and his prose shows 
a decided preference for the Greek. The Georgics is the 
only poem of Vergil's that is recommended in his treatise On 
Education, although it is not credible that the Aeneid would 
have had no place in his ideal system of education. But 
when we come to his great epic, the influence of the Aeneid 
is traceable as well as that of the Iliad. Before we 
consider in detail the Vergilian elements in Paradise Lost, 
however, we must go back nearly a century and examine 
the earlier epics and their relations to classical structure. 

The desire to write an epic poem had been strong among 
the Elizabethans. As we have already seen, Spenser evi- 
dently had the feeling that he was doing for England what 
Vergil had done for Rome. The figure of Arthur was un- 
doubtedly looked upon somewhat in the same light in 
relation to the history of Britain as the figure of Aeneas 
in connection with the legendary founding and the develop- 
ment of Rome. The fact that he was essentially a romantic 
figure did not deter the poets from Spenser to Blackmore 
from using or thinking of using him as the central hero 



MILTON AND THE CLASSICAL EPIC 129 

of an epic which was professedly based on classic models 
in some respects at least. He had surpassed Brutus in 
epic interest. Ben Jonson is reported to have said that 
"for a Heroik poeme, , . . ther was no such ground as King 
Arthur's fiction." 

The historic interest had great vitality in the sixteenth 
century. It is shown in the large number of historical plays 
that were produced on the Elizabethan stage, and also in 
the subjects chosen by the epic poets of the last part of 
that century and the first part of the next. These "saurians 
in English literature," as Lowell called them, were answer- 
ing a real demand on the part of their readers in giving them 
"epic poems" which would satisfy their desire to know 
more of their country's story and gratify their national 
pride. The enthusiasm which followed the defeat of the 
Spanish Armada perpetuated itself not only on the stage 
but in the productions of the printing-houses. The chron- 
icles of Holinshed and Hall furnished the necessary informa- 
tion, and were popular as sources for plays and poems. The 
later historical work of Camden, Stow, and Sir Robert Cotton 
responded to the same conditions as the poems of Warner, 
Daniel and Drayton. 

William Warner's Albion's England was the first of the 
"saurians." Meres classes him with Spenser as one of 
the chief heroic poets of the English, comparing him with 
Vergil, but there is little of the classical epic about this 
"continued historic of the same kingdome, from the originals 
of the first inhabitants thereof," beginning with Noah and 
the Flood, except the fact that it is in twelve books. It is 
interesting, however, that the account of Aeneas' treason 
and banishment from Troy and his arrival in Italy, finds its 
place in due time in Warner's leisurely narrative, at the 
end of the second book. But appended to the poem is 
"An Addition in Proese to the Second Booke of Albion's 



130 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

England: Contayning a Breuiate of the true Historie of 
Aeneas." He does not mention Vergil's name, but gives 
a fairly full abstract of the Aeneid, omitting the sixth book 
entirely and expressing his belief that the story of Juno's 
causing the storm is "a poeticall fiction." There are some 
curious turns in the narrative, and he mentions Boccaccio's 
version of Dido's death and gives an account of Aeneas' 
descendants. 

Samuel Daniel's History of the Civil Wars is the next in 
point of time. His model, however, is definitely the Phar- 
salia, and although his 

What fury, what madness held thee so, 
Dear England, 

goes back ultimately to the convention of Vergil's 
Musa, mihi causas memora, quo numine laeso, 

it evidently depends directly on Lucan's 

Quis furor, o cives, quae tanta licentia ferri 
Gentibus invisis Latium praebere cruorem! 

There was an evident pretense at epic structure, but the 
poem is guiltless of anything approaching epic unity. 

A large portion of the work of Michael Drayton was 
patriotic in purpose. His legends drawn from the chronicles 
and his England's Heroicall Epistles point to his interest in 
his country's story, even though they have no importance 
in an historical way. The Barons' Wars, completed and 
published in 1603, was a revision of a poem published in 
1596 under the title of Mortimeriados, a name which indi- 
cates the epic pretensions of the poem. It begins with the 
proposal of the subject and the somewhat Vergilian lines, 

Me from the soft lays and tender loves doth bring. 
Of dreadful fights and horrid wars to sing. 



MILTON AND THE CLASSICAL EPIC 131 

although the reminiscence of Spenser's introductory stanzas 
is perhaps stronger than that of Vergil. The figure of Mis- 
chief instilling poison into the various characters of the 
story is doubtless due to a memory of Vergil's picture of 
Alecto as she visits first Amata, then Turnus, and finally 
the Trojans, and inspires them all with the impulses which 
lead to the conflict between the Trojans and the Latins. 
But again there is no epic structure, in spite of the promise 
of it in the proposal of the subject and the invocation which 
begin the poem. The Poly-Olbion, eighteen cantos of which 
appeared in 1612 and the remaining twelve in 1622, makes 
no pretense at being epic in form. It is "A Chorographical 
description of all the Tracts, Rivers, Mountains, Forests, 
and other Parts of the Renowned Isle of Great Britain, with 
Intermixture of the most Remarkable Stories, Antiquities, 
Wonders, Rarities, Pleasures, and Commodities of the 
same." It is a true "saurian" with nearly fifteen thousand 
vertebrae in its backbone, a "strange Herculean task," as 
its own author called it. Its chief interest to us is in its 
patriotic purpose and in its telling of the story of Aeneas 
as an introduction to the story of Brute, in a form which 
is dependent on Vergil, and not on the mediaeval Dares 
story. In this respect it shows an advance over Warner, 
who relegated Vergil to an appendix. 

To these earlier writers of the heroic poem it would not be 
necessary to give so much space, if it were not true that 
they were the forerunners of the classical epic of Cowley and 
Milton, and that each one of them showed in one way or 
another that Vergil was in his mind, even though he did 
not imitate the form of the Aeneid. They represent, how- 
ever, a kind of poetry that was slightly to one side of the 
main trend of the early seventeenth century. They were 
all comparatively unimportant, and the prominent poets 
of that time confined themselves largely to short poems, 



132 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

lyrical, pastoral, or satirical. But about the middle of the 
century there came a change, and many long sustained 
narrative poems were produced by the leading writers. 
Even the satires, like Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel, were 
cast in the form of a story. How much of this was due to 
the critical discussion, both in France and England, of the 
characteristics of the "heroic poem," it would be difficult 
to say. But doubtless the poets were eager to try their 
hand at working out the current theories. In France the 
epic had an even greater popularity than in England for a 
few years after 1650. " En 15 ans," says Lanson, *' six 
grandes epopees paraissent, qui forment un total de 136 
chants, et dont quelques-unes ont eu assez longtemps le 
renom de chefs-d'oeuvre. Je n'en parlerai pas," he con- 
tinues, "ce sont les parties mortes et bien mortes de la 
litterature classiques." The names of these, Saint Louis, 
Alaric, La Pucelle, Clovis, Charlemagne, and Childehrande, 
indicate an interest in history, but Biblical subjects were 
also used, as in Saint-Amant's Moyse sauve, Godeau's Saint 
Paul, and Coras' Jonas, Josue, Samson, and David. 

After the "saurians" the epic in England branched out 
in two different directions. The historic background no 
longer attracted the epic poet. Milton dallied with the 
thought of an epic on the Arthurian story, but that was in 
his youth, before the historical fervor had abated. The 
two types of literature which affected the further develop- 
ment of the epic were the rather inharmonious ones of the 
French sentimental romance and the Biblical stories. 

The two chief examples of the first of these classes are the 
Gondibert of Davenant and the Pharonnida of Chamberlayne. 
The former, of which less than half was completed, is pref- 
aced by a long letter to Hobbes, and also a reply from that 
philosopher, containing much praise of the new poem, 
including the statement that "it would last as long as the 



MILTON AND THE CLASSICAL EPIC 133 

Iliad or the Aeneid." But it is evident that with the drama 
and the French romances as models in form and subject- 
matter, the result was necessarily far from a classical epic, 
and Vergil had no influence on either style or material. 
The same thing is true of Pharonnida, which was published 
in 1659, an excellent example of discursiveness and all 
that is not classical in structure. 

But side by side with the love of the French romances 
which was characteristic of a large portion of the reading 
public of the seventeenth century, was the Puritan interest 
in the Bible. The translation of the Bible into English under 
James I, and the emphasis placed by the Puritans on the 
authority of Holy Writ, had nearly made of the English 
a "people of one book." Decided stress in education in 
both Latin and Greek was placed on patristic learning, and 
the Church Fathers were quoted nearly as frequently as 
the classics. All this naturally reacted upon the poetry 
of the century, and Biblical stories furnished good subjects 
for epics, which, unlike the romantic heroic poems, were 
classical in form. 

Sir Wilham Alexander began a poem, Jonathan: an 
Heroicke Poeme Intended, but did not write more than the 
first book. Giles Fletcher's Christ's Victorie and his brother's 
Locusts, or Apollyonists are of interest to us because of their 
influence on Milton. Milton's best-known English predeces- 
sor in the religious epic was Abraham Cowley, who was also 
the most VergiUan of all the epic poets. His prose as well 
as his poetry shows his admiration of Vergil, "whose Foot- 
steps," he says in one place, "I adore." Constant allusion 
and quotation, often inaccurate, give evidence of his familiar 
knowledge of this "best poet." In his poem on the Motto 
to the Miscellanies, tentanda via est, he says, 

Come my best Friends, my Books, and lead me on, 



134 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

and after a welcome to the "great Stagirite" and to "learn'd 
Cicero," he cries, 

Welcome the Mantuan Swan, Virgil the Wise, 
Whose verse walks highest but not flies. 

Who brought green Poesie to her perfect Age; 
And made that Art which was a Rage. 

And in his Ode: Upon the occasion of a Copy of Verses of my 
Lord Broghill, he definitely expresses, although in a humorous 
way, his reverence for Vergil above all other poets: 

Then in a rage I took 

And out at window threw 
Ovid and Horace, all the chiming crew. 

Homer himself went with them too, 
Hardly escap'd the sacred Mantuan Book. 

Four books, all that were ever finished, of his Davideis, a 
Sacred Poem of the Troubles of David, were published in 1656, 
in a volume containing also the Miscellanies, the Mistress 
and the Pindarique Odes. In the Preface to the volume, he 
writes thus of the Davideis: "I come now to the last Part, 
which is Davideis, or an Heroical Poem of the Troubles of 
David; which I designed into Twelve Books; not for the 
Tribes sake, but after the Pattern of our Master Virgil; 
and intended to close all with that most Poetical and excel- 
lent Elegie of Davids on the death of Saul and Jonathan: 
For I had no mind to carry him quite on to his Anointing 
at Hebron, because it is the custom of Heroick Poets (as 
we see by the examples of Homer and Virgil, whom we 
should do ill to forsake to imitate others) never to come 
to the full end of their Story, but onely so near, that every 
one may see it." In the same Preface he explains carefully 
the superior advantages of sacred subjects over profane 
ones. "Amongst all holy and consecrated things which 



MILTON AND THE CLASSICAL EPIC 135 

the Devil ever stole and alienated from the service of the 
Deity, . . . there is none that he so universally, and so 
long usurpt, as Poetry. It is time to recover it out of the 
Tyrants hands, and to restore it to the Kingdom of God, 
who is the Father of it." In ancient times, "those mad 
stories of the Gods and Heroes" served the purpose of a 
religious stimulus to the people, for "there was no other 
Religion, and therefore that was better than none at all." 
But for the Christian, "Does not the passage of Moses and 
the Israelites into the Holy Land, yield incomparably more 
Poetical variety, then the voyages of Ulysses or Aeneas?" 
And so he continues through several more comparisons, 
finally concluding, "All the Books of the Bible are either 
already most admirable, and exalted pieces of Poesie, or 
are the best Materials in the world for it." 

The poem itself gives Cowley an opportunity to display 
a vast amount of Biblical knowledge, and the Notes permit 
him to supplement this and also to add much classical lore 
as well. He is quite frank in his Notes about admitting 
his debts to Homer and Vergil, especially the latter, but 
indeed they are sufficiently obvious without his mention 
of them. The poem opens in conventional fashion, and here 
as elsewhere the model is evidently Vergil rather than 
Homer : 

I sing the Man who Judahs Scepter bore 
In that right hand which held the Crook before. . . . 
Much danger first, much toil did he sustain, 
Whilst Saul and Hell crost his strong fate in vain. 

This is followed by an invocation and prayer for divine 
guidance, which occasions the following note: "The custom 
of beginning all Poems, with a Proposition of the whole 
work, and an Invocation of some God for his assistance 
to go through with it, is so solemnly and religiously ob- 



136 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

served by all the ancient Poets, that though I could have 
found out a better way, I should not (I think) have ven- 
tured upon it. . . . The Grecians built this Portal with 
less state, and made but one part of these Two; in which, 
and almost all things else, I prefer the judgment of the 
Latins." Thus he is constantly appealing to the authority 
of the classical epics to justify his practice, as in the use of 
a second Invocation, the image employed to describe the 
swiftness and lightness of Asahel, and the catalogue of the 
companions of David, in the last of which he thinks that he 
has surpassed the ancients inasmuch as they, especially 
Homer, are too detailed and diffuse. He also invokes 
Vergil's authority for the use of half-lines, saying, "Though 
none of the English Poets, nor indeed of the ancient Latin, 
have imitated Virgil in leaving sometimes half-verses (where 
the sense seems to invite a man to that liberty) yet his author- 
ity alone is sufficient, especially in a thing that looks so 
naturally and gracefully; and I am far from their opinion, 
who think that Virgil himself intended to have filled up 
those broken Hemistiques." 

The story of David's youthful adventures offers many op- 
portunities for parallels with those of Aeneas, and Cowley 
takes full advantage of them. David's vision of the future 
history of his race is evidently reminiscent of the sixth 
book of the Aeneid, and his welcome at the court of Moab 
is like that of Aeneas at Carthage. Like Dido, Moab says, 

Swift Fame, when her round journey she does make. 
Scorns not sometimes Us in her way to take. 
Are you the man, did that huge Gyant kill? ^ 

By Moab David is entertained with a feast, where he sees 
the story of Lot pictured in tapestries, and where, after the 

» Cf. Aen. 1. 567-8, 617. 



MILTON AND THE CLASSICAL EPIC 137 

goblet is passed around, Melchor, like lopas, sings a lay in 
which 

His noble verse through Natures secrets lead, 

and Joab tells the king the story of David's early life. Thus 
Cowley manages to introduce the conventional ''episode," 
after the same manner as Aeneas' narrative at Dido's ban- 
quet, and continues it in David's recounting of further events 
in his own and Saul's past history on the next day when 
they go to hunt. So it is obvious that not only in single 
lines, such as 

And with proud prancings beat the putrid ground, 

which Cowley tells us is "in emulation of the Virgilian Verse, 
Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum," ' 

but in the general structure of the poem and the episodes 
and descriptions in it, Cowley is taking Vergil as his model. 
Denham expressed the contemporary recognition of his 
indebtedness to the classics : 

Horace's wit, and Virgil's state, 

He did not steal, but emulate! 

And when he would like them appear, 

Their garb, but not their clothes did wear. 

Cowley's Davideis was praised by Rymer, who had weighed 
Gondibert in the Aristotelian balance and found it wanting. 
And so when Addison came to criticize Paradise Lost* he 
applied the test which had been used for the epic since the 
critics of the Renaissance had formulated the rules of Aristo- 

3 Am. 8. 596. 

* The Spectator, Nos. 267, 273, 279, 285, 291, 297, 303, 309, 315, 
321, 327, 333, 339, 345, 351, 357, 363, 369. 



138 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

tie and Horace. ''I shall examine it," he said, "by the rules 
of epic poetry, and see whether it falls short of the Iliad or 
Aeneid in the beauties which are essential to that kind of 
writing." He finds, upon investigation, that it fulfills the 
requirements that the "fable" be "one, great, and entire." 
The unity it secures as do its great predecessors, by plunging 
into the midst of things, as Milton himself says in the Argu- 
ment to the first book. It is complete in all its parts, hav- 
ing beginning, middle and end. And it is great, even in 
details, greater than the Iliad or the Aeneid. He then 
considers in the prescribed manner the characters, the 
sentiments, and the language, and concludes, that while 
there are defects in the poem, as in the actions of Sin 
and Death and the picture of the Limbo of Vanity, which 
seem more hke Spenser and Ariosto than Homer and Vergil, 
still on the whole it measures up to the classical standards. 
All this seems rather futile criticism to the modern lover of 
Paradise Lost, but these were the serious standards of that 
time by which a poem must stand or fall. And obviously 
Milton was guided by these classic principles, although one 
never feels that they were shackling his genius. 

In considering the influence of the classics on Milton, 
this conventional epic structure must be taken into account. 
But there arises at once the question whether the main 
influence is that of Homer or Vergil. The fact that Milton 
was a lover of the Greeks rather than of the Romans might 
lead to the conclusion that the father of epic poetry was 
chiefly responsible; and the proposal of the subject and 
invocation and prayer for divine guidance and illumination, 
the narration of things past by means of the conversation 
between Raphael and Adam, the vision of the hero's de- 
scendants, the epic combats and the epic similes, are not 
exclusively Vergilian, except perhaps the vision of the 
future, which is reminiscent of Aeneas' conversation with 



MILTON AND THE CLASSICAL EPIC 139 

his father in the Underworld. But it must be remembered 
that for various reasons Vergil's Aeneid furnished the best 
model for the classical epic. In the first place, it was far 
better known than were the Homeric poems. The English- 
man of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was trained 
in a Roman rather than a Greek atmosphere, and was 
able to read and appreciate the Aeneid more fully than 
the Iliad and the Odyssey. In the second place, the greater 
artificiality of the Latin poem from the point of view of 
mere form, gave it a higher position as a model. It was 
easier to apply the "rules" to the Aeneid than to the Iliad. 
Its greater brevity undoubtedly made it more usable as a 
pattern, and the generally recognized fact that Vergil had 
comprehended within the limits of a single poem the plots 
of both the Homeric epics, commended his work to those 
pseudo-classic apostles of the concise. The Aeneid was the 
most perfect and most concentrated example of epic tech- 
nique, and consequently critics and poets united in praising 
it and utilizing it. Hence it may be assumed that Milton 
was no exception, and that while the Homeric poems with- 
out doubt were in his mind as he planned Paradise Lost, 
and assuredly furnished a large number of images and sug- 
gestions for certain passages, it is certain that Milton de- 
pended chiefly on the Aeneid as the model for the structure ^/^ 
of his epic. 

But as Addison said, "I must here take notice that Milton 
is everywhere full of hints, and sometimes literal trans- 
lations taken from the greatest of the Greek and Latin poets." 
And Vergil furnishes his share. The very first words that 
Satan speaks to Beelzebub in Hell, 

If thou beest he — but Oh how fallen! how changed 
From him! 

(P. L. 1. 84-5) 



140 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

recall the words of Aeneas when he was telling of the ap- 
parition of Hector on the last night of Troy: 

ei mihi, quails erat, quantum mutatus ab illo 
Hectore qui redit exuvias indutus Achilli. 

{Aen. 2. 274-5) 

The catalogue of the fallen angels is more like that of the 
warriors in the seventh Aeneid than like that of the ships 
in the second book of the Iliad, and the description of the 
building of Pandemonium certainly owes something to the 
account of the building of Carthage in the general spirit of 
the passage.^ And there soon follows, though not directly 
in connection with the building of the palace, Vergil's favorite 
picture of the bees : 

As bees 
In spring-time, when the Sun with Taurus rides. 
Pour forth their populous youth about the hive 
In clusters; they among fresh dews and flowers 
Fly to and fro, or on the smoothed plank. 
The suburb of their straw-built citadel. 
New rubbed with balm, expatiate, and confer 
Their state-affairs. 

(P. L. 1. 768-775) « 

Vergil's account of the occupations of the heroes in the 
Elysian Fields was certainly the model for Milton's descrip- 
tion of the sports indulged in by the fallen angels. To 
quote only a few lines from each, Milton's 

Part on the plain, or in the air sublime. 
Upon the wing or in swift race contend, 
As at the Olympian games or Pythian fields; 

6 Cf. P. L. 1. 376-521 and Aen. 7. 641-817, P. L. 1. 670-730 and 
Aen. 1. 421-9. 

« Cf. Aen. 1. 430-6 and Georg. 4. 149-169. 



MILTON AND THE CLASSICAL EPIC 141 

Part curb their fiery steeds, or shun the goal 

With rapid wheels, or fronted brigads form. . . . 

. . . Others, more mild, 

Retreated in a silent valley, sing 

With notes angelical to many a harp 

Their own heroic deed, and hapless fall 

By doom of battle, 

(P. L. 2. 528-532, 546-550) 
is much like Vergil's 

pars in gramineis exercent membra palaestris, 
contendunt ludo et fulva luctantur harena; 
pars pedibus plaudunt choreas et carmina dicunt. 
. . . quae gratia currum 
armorumque fuit vivis, quae cura nitentis 
pascere equos, eadem sequitur tellure repostos. 
conspicit, ecce, alios dextra laevaque per herbam 
vescentis laetumque choro paeana canentis 
inter odoratum lauri nemus, unde superne 
plurimus Eridani per silvam volvitur amnis. 

(Aen. 6. 642-4, 653-9) 

Addison said that the description of the actions of Sin 
seemed more akin to the romances of Spenser and Ariosto 
than to the epics of Homer and Vergil, but the appearance of 
Sin is certainly a classical picture. She who 

seemed woman to the waist, and fair. 
But ended foul in many a scaly fold, 
. . . About her middle rovmd, 
A cry of Hell-hounds never-ceasing barked, 
(P. L. 2. 650-1, 653-4) 

is surely Vergil's Scylla, whom he describes in almost these 
very words: 

prima hominis facies et pulchro pectore virgo 
pube tenus, postrema immani corpore pistrix 
delphinum caudas utero commissa luporum. 

{Aen. 3. 426-8 and cf. 1. 432.) 



142 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

The descent of Raphael was evidently described with 
the account of the flight of Mercury in mind, as Milton's 
words, "Like Maia's son he stood," would indicated Like 
Aeneas at the beginning of his narrative of the fall of Troy, 
Raphael complies with Adam's request with the prefatory 
remark, 

High matter thou injoin'st me, prime of Men — 
Sad task and hard, 

{P. L. 5. 563-4) * 

and like Aeneas, Satan passes through the midst of his hosts 
invisible, and finally emerges "as from a cloud." ^ 

Beside these passages which are like Vergil not only in 
expression but in context, there are many lines and phrases 
that are clearly Vergilian. Such, for example, are the lines, 

Then, much revolving, thus in sighs began, 

which at once recalls the familiar plurima volvens, and 

Tells the suggested cause, and casts between 
Ambiguous words, 

Sinon's voces ambiguas. The 

passage broad, 
Smooth, easy, inoffensive, down to Hell, 

enshrines the well-known facilis descensus Averni, and, si 
parva licet componere magnis,^^ the words of the Messiah to 
his Father, 

^ Cf. Aen. 1. 300-301, 4. 253-8 and P. L. 5. 266-277. 

» Cf. Aen. 2. 3. 

» Cf. Aen. 1. 411-414, 516-518, 579-581, 586-8, and P. L. 10. 441-452. 

'" Milton copies this line from Georg. 4. 176 four times, P. L. 2. 
921-2, 6. 310-11, 10. 306, P. R. 4. 563-4. It is also used by Cowley, 
Dryden, Pope and Tickell. 



MILTON AND THE CLASSICAL EPIC 143 

Father Eternal, thine is to decree ; 

Mine both in Heaven and Earth to do thy will 

Supreme, 

(P. L. 10. 68-70) 

are like those of Aeolus to Juno, 

tuus, o regina, quid optes 
explorare labor; mihi iussa capessere fas est. 

(Aen. 1. 76-77) 

Examples might be multiplied almost indefinitely, but these 
are sufficient to show how strongly Vergil affected Milton's 
phraseology. 

Paradise Regained, which is constructed rather on the 
"brief model" of Job than the ''diffuse" model of the classics, 
shows little Vergilian influence. Its first line resembles the 
discarded first line of the Aeneid: 

I, who erewhile the happy Garden sung 
By one man's disobedience lost, now sing 
Recovered Paradise to all mankind. 

(P. R. 1. 1-3) 

There is a repetition of the favorite clause, 

to compare 
Great things with small, 

(P. R. 4. 563-4) 
and the lines, 

nor slept the winds 
Within their stony caves, but rushed abroad 
From the four hinges of the world, and fell 
On the vexed wilderness, whose tallest pines. 
Though rooted deep as high, and sturdiest oaks. 
Bowed their stiff necks, 

(P. R. 4. 413-418) 



144 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

combine Vergil's description of the storm, when una Eurus- 
que Notusque ruunt, and of the oak to which Aeneas is com- 
pared when assailed by Anna's pleas, which 

quantum vertice ad auras 
aetherias, tantum radice in Tartara tendit. 

{Aen. 4. 445-6) 

It would be a satisfaction if there were any possibility of 
establishing a definite relationship between the hexameters 
of Vergil and the blank verse of Milton. Addison said, 
"Milton has copied after Homer rather than Virgil in the 
length of his periods, the copiousness of his phrases, and the 
running of his verses into one another." But Tennyson, 
perhaps a more sympathetic critic though hardly a greater 
admirer of both poets, English and Latin, spoke more than 
once of the similarities between their poems in sound and 
movement. Surely if any one could appreciate the stately 
harmonies of Vergil's verse, it was this 

God-gifted organ-voice of England, 

and we know that their methods of workmanship were much 
the same, a method of laborious polishing of each line until 
it reached the perfection which is characteristic of the finished 
work of both poets. No one is so like Vergil in this partic- 
ular as Milton, except perhaps Pope, and while Milton's 
own genius is a sufficient explanation, it is pleasant to think, 
with Tennyson, that it is partly because he had studied 
Vergil's verse. 

But while Milton is so largely indebted to the classical 
poets for diction and form, he is quite in agreement with 
Cowley in thinking that the ancient pagan stories, and 
indeed the tales of chivalry as well, are inferior to those 
of the Bible as subjects for epic poetry. This belief he 



MILTON AND THE CLASSICAL EPIC 145 

expresses in unmistakable words at the beginning of the 
ninth book of Paradise Lost : 

I now must change 
These notes to tragic — foul distrust, and breach 
Disloyal, on the part of man, revolt 
And disobedience; on the part of Heaven, 
Now alienated, distance and distaste, 
Anger and just rebuke, and judgment given. 
. . . Sad task! yet argument 
Not less but more heroic than the wrath 
Of stern Achilles on his foe pursued 
Thrice fugitive about Troy wall; or rage 
Of Turnus for Lavinia disespoused; 
Or Neptune's ire, or Juno's that so long 
Perplexed the Greek, and Cytherea's son. 

(P. L. 9. 5-10, 13-19) 

Paradise Lost stands as an example of a poem in which 
supreme genius has triumphed over the restrictions imposed 
by the conventions of the classical epic. Where genius 
was lacking, however, the result of an endeavor to write 
after the pattern of Vergil and Homer was a sad failure. 
This is illustrated by the four epics of Sir Richard Blackmore, 
a better physician, apparently, than he was a poet. In 
these he returned to subjects drawn from English history or 
legend, and called his four poems Prince Arthur, King 
Arthur, Eliza, and Alfred. They are most carefully worked 
out along the recognized epic lines, with Vergil as the 
model rather than Homer. But in spite of this conscientious- 
ness in complying with the rules, they called forth a storm 
of criticism, although Prince Arthur was well liked by the 
class of readers who were not troubled by the relation of 
the author to the classics. "Of his four epic poems," 
wrote Johnson, "the first had such reputation and popularity 
as enraged the critics; the second was at least known enough 



146 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

to be ridiculed; the two last had neither friends nor enemies." 
John Dennis was one of the critics who were enraged by the 
success of Prince Arthur, and he wrote a book of more than 
two hundred pages to prove that Blackmore had not suc- 
ceeded, and that he had not shown the "judgment" of his 
model, Vergil, 

Another form of verse in the seventeenth century, which 
pointed forward to the time of Pope and his followers, is 
the mock-epic or burlesque, of which the chief example is 
Butler's Hudihras. This poem has various imitations of 
Vergil, notably the parody of the description of Fame : 

There is a tall long-sided dame, 

(But wondrous light) ycleped Fame, 

That like a thin cameleon boards 

Herself on air, and eats her words; 

Upon her shoulders wings she wears 

Like hanging sleeves, lined through with ears, 

And eyes, and tongues, as poets list, 

Made good by deep mythologist : 

With these she through the welkin flies. 

And sometimes carries truth, oft lies. . . . 

This tattUng gossip knew too well 

What mischief Hudibras befell; 

And straight the spiteful tidings bears 

Of all, to th' unkind Widow's ears. 

(Part II, Canto 1) " 

And if, as has been said, Scarron's Virgile Travesti was the 
model for Butler's style, it undoubtedly furnished the sug- 
gestion for such passages as this. About the same time that 
the first and second parts of Hudihras were published, 
Charles Cotton issued his burlesques of the first and fourth 
books of the Aeneid, certainly under the stimulus of Scarron's 
work. They were printed together in 1670 under the title 

" Cf. Aen. 4. 173-197. 



MILTON AND THE CLASSICAL EPIC 147 

of Scarronides, or Virgil Travestie, and this book went 
through fourteen editions by 1807, and stimulated the 
production of other burlesques of a similar nature, such as 
Maronides and Cataplus and the Irish Hudibras, and the 
History of the Famous Love between a Fair Noble Parisian 
Lady and a Beautiful Young Singing-Man. All these 
were definite parodies of portions of the Aeneid, and they 
undoubtedly inspired much of the imitation of Vergil in 
the mock-epics of the next century. 



CHAPTER VII 
DRYDEN AND POPE 

When Pope, in his Temple of Fame, imitated Chaucer's 
Hous of Fame, he, like his master, placed the poets of antiq- 
uity on pillars. His Vergil, however, was standing not upon 
a pillar "of tinned iron cleere" but on a golden column, 

On which a shrine of purest gold was rear'd; 
Finished the whole, and labour'd every part, 
With patient touches of unwearied art: 
The Mantuan there in sober triumph sate. 
Composed his posture and his looks sedate; 
On Homer still he fixed a rev'rent eye, 
Great without pride, in modest majesty. 
In living sculpture on the sides were spread 
The Latian wars, and haughty Turnus dead; 
Ehza stretched upon the fun'ral pjTe, 
Aeneas bending with his aged sire : 
Troy flamed in burning gold, and o'er the throne 
"Arms and the man" in golden ciphers shone. 

The first few lines of this passage explain in part the attrac- 
tion which Vergil had for Pope, and emphasize the phase 
of his genius which commanded especial admiration in the 
age of Dryden and Pope. It was the "patient touches of 
unwearied art" which admitted him to Pope's Temple of 
Fame. 

At no previous time had the appreciation of Vergil rested 
so largely upon an admiration of his style. The pseudo- 
classic ideals of restraint and regularity were satisfied by 

148 



DRYDEN AND POPE 149 

the perfect finish of Vergil's hexameters, and his admirers 
were fain to follow the precepts of Horace and the example of 

Old Virgil who would write ten lines, they say, 
At dawn, and lavish all the golden day 
To make them wealthier in his readers' eyes. 

The Renaissance advocacy of imitation of the ancients was 
revived with a new significance, or rather a new emphasis. 
Form and style were the gods which the English Augustans 
served, and those gods took on the semblance of Horace in 
the satire, the epistle, and the verse essay, and of Vergil in 
the pastoral, the didactic poem, and the mock-epic. Of 
serious epic there was comparatively little, and that little 
was based rather on Homer than on Vergil, although of 
course it was impossible for Glover and Wilkie to avoid some 
echoes of Vergil. Indeed, the former was said to have 
shown "Virgil's sober rage." Wilkie, whose Epigoniad 
did not appear until 1757, twenty years after Glover's 
Leonidas, was beginning to come under the influence of the 
growing preference for Greek, and the reaction from the 
admiration for the imitative art of Vergil. 

The age was essentially Latin in its culture. The superior 
"fire" and "invention" of Homer might arouse admiration 
in the minds of some critics of Vergil, but it was a cold sort 
of flame when translated into heroic couplets, and the 
compensating merits of the Roman poet in judgment and 
moral purpose found plenty of defenders. The Latin char- 
acter of the classical culture of the period is shown, not only 
in the general Roman polish of the literature, but in the 
great preponderance of Latin quotations in the prose, and 
the far more general use of the Latin authors for mottoes 
in the periodicals, pamphlets, and volumes and collections 
of poems. Horace was the greatest favorite for mottoes, 
as is natural in view of the greater quotability of the Odes 



150 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

and also of the sententiousness of many of the lines in the 
Satires and Epistles which lend themselves to citation. 
But Vergil was not far behind in popularity. Of the mottoes 
in the Spectator, for instance, one hundred and thirty-nine 
are from Vergil, two hundred and thirty-nine from Horace, 
and five hundred and fifty-six from all other authors, includ- 
ing only a very few from the Greek. 

Indeed, Vergil was a part of the air that the man of letters 
breathed in the pseudo-classic period, and it was practically 
impossible at that time for a poet or prose writer to avoid 
quotations and echoes of his poems, or allusions to the 
tale of Aeneas' adventures. Dean Swift, who could hardly 
be thought of as possessing a nature sympathetic with that 
of Vergil, uses him constantly. There is scarcely a poet whom 
some admirer does not call the Vergil of his age, scarcely a ver- 
sifier who does not refer many times to the story of Aeneas, 
scarcely a traveler who does not visit Vergil's tomb and recall 
in verse or prose his emotions on the occasion of this sacred 
pilgrimage or his memories of the poet's works at Rome and 
other places associated with his name, scarcely a prose 
critic who does not use his lines again and again for illus- 
tration or adornment. Also there is scarcely a poet who 
does not try his hand at translating at least an Eclogue 
or a portion of a book of the Georgics or the Aeneid, and Addi- 
son, who himself had made versions of a part of the fourth 
Georgic and the story of Achaemenides, praises Dryden's 
Virgil in words which are an eloquent commentary on the 
literary and educational standards of the time. "The 
illiterate among our countrymen," he says, "may learn to 
judge from Dryden's Virgil of the most perfect epic per- 
formance." ^ 

The age of classicism was a period in which translation was 
cultivated as one of the chief forms of poetry. During the 

1 The Freeholder, No. 40. 



DRYDEN AND POPE 151 

seventeenth century there had come a change in the theory 
of translation from Ben Jonson's advocacy of the hteral 
version. While Chapman and Harington had urged a free 
translation, with an effort to reproduce the spirit rather than 
the letter, the translators of Vergil had before this time been 
fairly faithful. Gavin Douglas had prided himself upon 
following Vergil as closely as he could, and Surrey and 
Phaer had both clung quite closely to the original. But in 
1656, Sir John Denham published a translation of a portion 
of the second book of the Aeneid, which he had written 
twenty years before, together with a brief essay expressing 
his ideas of what a translation should be. "I conceive it 
to be a vulgar error," he said, "in translating poets, to 
affect being a fidus interpres. . . . Poesie is of so subtle a 
spirit, that in pouring out of one language into another, it 
will all evaporate; and if a new spirit be not added in the 
transfusion, there will remain nothing but a caput mortuum. 
. . . And therefore if Virgil must needs speak English, 
it were fit he should speak not only as a man of this Nation, 
but as a man of this Age." This new kind of translation, 
with its effort to walk beside an author instead of at his 
heels, was believed in and practised by Denham and Waller 
and a host of smaller poets of the new classical school, 
including the well-known names of Sir William Temple, 
Joseph Addison, the Earl of Roscommon, and Sir Charles 
Sedley. The first few lines of Denhara's Passion of Dido for 
Aeneas, with their un-Vergilian pun, will illustrate the free- 
dom with which these translators treated their original. 

Having at large declar'd Jove's embassy, 
Cyllenius from Aeneas straight doth fly ; 
He loth to disobey the god's command, 
Nor wiUing to forsake this pleasant land, 
Asham'd the kind Eliza to deceive, 
But more afraid to take a solemn leave, 



152 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

He many ways his labouring thoughts revolves. 
But fear o'ercoming shame, at last resolves 
(Instructed by the god of thieves) to steal 
Himself away, and his escape conceal.^ 

All of these men, however, attempted to render only a por- 
tion of the works of Vergil into English, some confining 
themselves to a part of a single book of the Georgics or the 
Aeneid. Many of them produced poems more rightly named 
paraphrases than translations. Two versions of the entire 
works of Vergil had been made before that of Dryden, 
that of the Earl of Lauderdale and that of John Ogilby, 
which was published first in 1649, and underwent various 
revisions and appeared in many editions. It was "adorned 
with Sculptures" which, I fear, are the most interesting 
parts of the book. 

But the hand of genius was laid to the task of trans- 
lating Vergil in the last decade of the seventeenth century, 
and whatever may be our opinion of Dryden's Virgil as a 
translation, we must admit that it is a splendid example 
of the possibilities of the heroic couplet. "Lay by Virgil," 
he wrote in the Dedication of his Aeneid, ". . . when you 
take my version," and it is thus separately that it must 
be judged. "The way I have taken," he said, "is not so 
straight as metaphrase, nor so loose as paraphrase; some 
things too I have omitted, and sometimes have added of 
my own. ... I have endeavored to make Virgil speak such 
English as he would himself have spoken, if he had been 
born in England, and in this present age." 

The critical dedications and prefaces to the various 
portions of the translation are important not only in being 
examples of the first modern prose, but also as expressing 
Dryden's theories of translation, which are summarized 

2 Aen. 4. 276-286, and of. 11. 331-9. 



DRYDEN AND POPE 153 

in the quotation just given, and his estimate of Vergil. 
Of the Pastorals he had a high opinion, although he recog- 
nized that they were the work of a young man, and he thought 
that in the fourth, sixth, and eighth Eclogues Vergil at- 
tained "a pitch as lofty as ever he was able to reach after- 
wards." 

In the Dedication of the Aeneid, he comes to the defense 
of Vergil against his detractors, who were many in those 
days of controversy not only over the relative merits of 
the ancients and moderns, but also over the superiority of 
Homer or Vergil. The French generally remained loyal 
to Vergil, and Voltaire, in the Appendix to his Henriade, 
said, "Homere a fait Virgile, dit-on; si cela est, c'est sans 
doute son plus bel ouvrage." Dryden takes up the cudgels 
for Vergil and argues against the criticisms of his "moral, 
the duration or length of time taken up in the action of the 
poem, and what they have to urge against the manners 
of his hero." He finds in the Aeneid both a political and 
a moral purpose, and in its hero the pattern of a perfect 
prince. Hence he is necessarily pious, for perfection begins 
and ends in piety, but he is also courageous "in an heroicall 
degree." So he continues, taking up one by one the familiar 
attacks upon the poem and its chief character. When he 
comes to the defense of Aeneas against the charge of infidelity 
to Dido, he gives a new turn to the question by claiming that 
Vergil was trying to please the Romans by disgracing the 
founder of the race of their enemy, Carthage, for "he shows 
her ungrateful to the memory of her first husband." Could 
the romancers of the Middle Ages have heard this, their 
hair would doubtless have stood on end with horror at such 
heresy ! 

In common with other critics of his time, Dryden thought 
that the Georgics were Vergil's finest work, "the best poem 
of the best poet," as he called them. The perfection and 



154 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

finish of the versification of this poem naturally appealed 
to the writers of the classic school. "Virgil wrote his 
Georgics,'^ continues Dryden, "in the full strength and vigor 
of his age, when his judgment was at the height, and before 
his fancy was declining." 

Dryden wrote his translation in great haste, and had to 
call upon some of his friends to aid him in completing his 
task. Addison and Chetwood furnished the Prefaces to 
the Georgics and the Eclogues, and also the Life of Virgil 
and the arguments for the different books. Dryden ac- 
knowledges the assistance he got from them, and also the 
aid which he received from the Earl of Lauderdale's transla- 
tion of the Aeneid, which he had seen in manuscript. It 
was not published, however, until after the death of its 
author and after the appearance of Dryden 's version, when 
the same nobleman's translations of the Eclogues and Georgics 
were combined with that of the Aeneid. As their editor 
claims, they are much closer to the Latin than Dryden 's 
rendering, but they are not such good poetry. 

Dryden had no false modesty in regard to his work. "I 
have endeavored," he says, "to follow the example of my 
master, and am the first Englishman, perhaps, who made 
it his design to copy him in his numbers, his choice of words, 
and his placing them for the sweetness of the sound." He 
goes on to speak of those of his countrymen who have 
translated episodes and other portions of Vergil's work with 
great success, naming Roscommon, Denham, Waller, and 
Cowley, as well as the Earl of Mulgrave, to whom the transla- 
tion of the Aeneid is dedicated. "But it is one thing," he 
continues, "to take pains on a fragment, and translate it 
perfectly; and another thing to have the weight of a whole 
author on my shoulders. They who believe the burden light, 
let them attempt the fourth, sixth, or eighth Pastoral; 
the first or fourth Georgic; and amongst the Aeneids, the 



DRYDEN AND POPE 155 

fourth, the fifth, the seventh, the ninth, the tenth, the 
eleventh, or the twelfth: for in these I think I have suc- 
ceeded best." And again in a note on the first Georgic, he 
says, "The poeti:y of this book is more sublime than any 
part of Virgil, if I have any taste: and if ever I have copied 
his majestic style, it is here." It is fair, therefore, to test 
Dryden's translations by passages from these books, and see 
whether he has succeeded or not. 

Although Dryden expressed himself as willing to be 
judged by his work in the twelfth book, among others, he 
also admits that he found his work growing more difficult 
as he progressed. Certainly his couplets at the very end 
of the Aeneid do not begin to approach the grandeur of 
Vergil's hexameters. The lines describing the fall of Turnus 
seem forced : 

The hero measured first, with narrow view. 
The destined mark; and, rising as he threw. 
With its full swing the fatal weapon flew. 
Not with less rage the rattling thunder falls. 
Or stones from battering engines break the walls; 
Swift as a whirlwind, from an arm so strong, 
The lance drove on, and bore the death along. 
Naught could his sevenfold shield the prince avail. 
Nor aught beneath his arms the coat of mail : 
It pierced through all, and with a grisly wound 
Transfix'd his thigh, and doubled him to ground. 
With groans the Latins rend the vaulted sky: 
Woods, hills, and valleys, to the voice reply.' 

It is also possible to find in these same books instances of 
Dryden's admitted elaboration of his original. It seems 
an inevitable characteristic of the translations of this period, 
and although Dryden and others attempt to justify them- 
selves by asserting their intention to make Vergil speak 

» Aen. 12. 919-929. 



156 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

as he would in their country and age, such additions always 
give the impression of having been made to suit the exigencies 
of the rhyme. In the following lines, for instance, there is 
no need for all the information: 

And now she leads the Trojan chief along 
The lofty walls, amidst the busy throng; 
Displays the Tyrian wealth and rising town, 
Which love, without his labor, makes his own. 
This pomp she shows, to tempt her wand'ring guest; 
Her faltring tongue forbids to speak the rest. 

The three lines in the Latin are quite sufficient to picture 
the situation, and are far more effective: 

nunc media Aenean secmn per moenia ducit 
Sidoniasque ostendat opes urbemque paratam, 
incipit effari mediaque in voce resistit.^ 

But there are also passages in these chosen books that 
represent Dryden's work at its best. In Dido's first remon- 
strance with Aeneas when he plans to depart, the translator 
has lifted his couplets to a high level of sustained passion 
and the lines flow so smoothly that the couplet structure 
is not sufficiently obtrusive to interfere with the effect of the 
unity of the passage: 

See, whom you fly! am I the foe you shun? 

Now, by those holy vows so late begun. 

By this right hand (since I have nothing more 

To challenge, but the faith you gave before), 

I beg you by these tears too truly shed. 

By the new pleasures of our nuptial bed; 

If ever Dido, when you most were kind, 

Were pleasing in your eyes, or touch'd your mind; 

* Aen. 4. 74-76. 



DRYDEN AND POPE 157 

By these my prayers, if prayers may yet have place, 

Pity the fortunes of a falling race! 

For you I have provoked a tyrant's hate, 

Incens'd the Libyan and the Tyrian state; 

For you alone I suffer in my fame, 

Bereft of honour and exposed to shame! ^ 

And while Dry den never can be Vergil, his description of 
the storm in the first Georgic may be compared without 
hesitation with its original. If ever he has copied his 
majestic style, it is here: 

Oft have I seen a sudden storm arise, 
From all the warring winds that sweep the skies : 
The heavy harvest from the root is torn, 
And whirl'd aloft the lighter stubble borne : ^ 
With such a force the flying rack is driven. 
And such a winter wears the face of heaven : 
And oft whole sheets descend of sluicy rain, 
Suck'd by the spongy clouds from off the main: 
The lofty skies at once come pouring down, 
The promised crop and golden labours drown. 
The dikes are filled; and with a roaring sound, 
The rising rivers float the nether ground; 
And rocks the bellowing voice of boiling seas rebound. 
The father of the gods his glory shrouds, 
Involved in tempests and a night of clouds; 
And, from the middle darkness flashing out. 
By fits he deals his fiery bolts about. 
Earth feels the motions of her angry god, 
Her entrails tremble, and her mountains nod; 
And flying beasts in forests seek abode: 
Deep horror seizes every human breast; 
Their pride is humbled, and their fear confessed, 
While he from high his rolling thunder throws. 
And fires the mountains with repeated blows: 
» Aen. 4. 314-323. 



158 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

The rocks are from their old foundations rent; 
The winds redouble, and the rains augment : 
The waves on heaps are dashed against the shore; 
And now the woods, and now the billows roar.* 

Dryden's translation went through a large number of 
editions during the eighteenth century, and its progress 
was attended by a crowd of satellites, versions of small 
portions of Vergil's works, following with more or less fidelity 
the work of their model. Some, like Doctor Trapp, who 
translated the whole of Vergil into English, "with large 
explanatory notes and critical observations," departed from 
the straight road of following Dry den, and even branched 
off into blank verse. Trapp, who had been since childhood 
a passionate admirer of him whom he called "not only a 
Poet, but a Philosopher, and a Divine," believed that it was 
the translator's duty to "draw Virgil as like as you can; 
to think of improving him is arrogant; and to flatter him 
is impossible." Therefore he criticized Dryden for being 
too free in his translation, saying, "When you most admire 
Mr. Dryden, you see the least of Virgil." 

In 1753 appeared the translation of the Aeneid by Christo- 
pher Pitt, together with versions of the Eclogues and Georgics 
by Joseph Warton, who also served as editor and wrote 
notes to the whole and essays on pastoral, didactic, and epic 
poetry. Although Warton criticized Dryden very severely 
for inaccuracies and positive errors in his translation, he 
did not scruple to borrow from him occasionally. He says 
in the preface to the book, "Mr. Pitt has borrowed about 
sixty lines from Mr. Dryden, and I myself about a dozen," 
although it is safe to say, that the diction of Warton's version 
of the Eclogues was more influenced by the phraseology of 
Pope's Pastorals. But Warton has not admitted that in 

« Gearg. 1. 316-334. 



DRYDEN AND POPE 159 

his discussion of epic poetry he has followed Dryden's 
Dedication to the Aeneid almost word for word for nearly 
a page. The translation is in heroic couplet, with all the 
vices, to a modern reader, of that form of verse, especially 
as a vehicle in which to represent Vergil's hexameters. Yet 
Pitt has succeeded in giving a fairly stirring rendering of 
several episodes, such as the fall of Troy, and at times 
surpasses Dryden in vigor and movement: 

Now far within, the regal rooms disclose, 
Loud and more loud, a direful scene of woes; 
The roof resounds with female shrieks and cries, 
And the shrill echo strikes the distant skies. 
The trembling matrons fly from place to place, 
And kiss the pillars with a last embrace; 
Bold Pyrrhus storms with all his father's fire; 
The barriers burst; the vanquish'd guards retire; 
The shatter'd doors the thund'ring engines ply; 
The bolts leap back; the sounding hinges fiy; 
The war breaks in; loud shouts the hostile train; 
The gates are storm'd; the foremost soldiers slain: 
Through the wide courts the crowding Argives roam. 
And swarm triumphant round the regal dome.^ 

There was undoubtedly a Vergilian influence on the 
prose of the eighteenth century as well as upon the poetry. 
Addison himself may have caught some of the mellowness 
of the master's style, although his English is too simple and 
colloquial to merit Young's description of it as "a sweet 
Virgilian prose." He approaches more nearly the Vergilian 
dignity in his verse, especially in his Cato. Of all the eigh- 
teenth century prose writers, Burke comes closest to the Ver- 
gilian polish and perfection, and this is perhaps accounted 
for by the fact that he always had a "ragged Delphin Virgil" 
not far from his elbow. He is said to have engaged in a 

T Aen. 2. 48&-495. 



160 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

dispute with Doctor Johnson over the relative merits of 
Homer and Vergil, and to have been the advocate of the Latin 
poet.^ Doctor Johnson himself, although he preferred 
Homer, knew Vergil well, and had practically memorized the 
Eclogues.^ 

Although the actual effect of the style of a poet upon a 
prose writer is too intangible to be analyzed with satis- 
factory accuracy, the extent to which Vergil was in the 
minds of nearly all the writers of the period is to be seen not 
only in the number of allusions and quotations, but in the 
general tendency of the critical work to hold up his poems as 
models to be imitated and as standards by which the achieve- 
ments of others might be judged. This tendency has al- 
ready been spoken of in connection with Addison's papers 
on Paradise Lost, and John Dennis' book attacking Black- 
more 's Prince Arthur. 

This latter volume is an excellent example of pseudo- 
classic criticism, concerned with the mechanics of the epic 
rather than its poetic value. Dennis discusses the same 
questions that engaged the attention of Dryden in his 
critical prefaces. Dryden, whose chief importance for us 
lies in his translation of Vergil, which has been discussed, 
had intended to write an epic poem, but he never accom- 
pHshed the task. What his success would have been, we can 
only conjecture, but doubtless he would have observed the 
rules and at the same time shown something of the individual- 
ity which he displayed in his criticism, and have surpassed 
the efforts of men like Blackmore and Glover and Wilkie. 
In 1666 he had written his Annus Mirabilis, of which he 
said in the prefatory letter to Sir Robert Howard, "I have 
called my poem historical, not epic, though both the actions, 
and actors are as much heroic as any poem can contain. 

* See Boswell's Life of Johnson, ed. by G. B. Hill, vol. iii, p. 220. 

• See Boswell's Johnson, ed. HiU, vol. iv, p. 252. 



DRYDEN AND POPE 161 

But since the action is not properly one, nor that accom- 
phshed in the last successes, I have judged it too bold a 
title for a few stanzas, which are little more in number 
than a single Iliad or the longest of the Aeneids." But 
although he will not call the poem epic, Vergil is his model. 
In the same letter, after a discussion of the relative merits 
of Ovid and Vergil, Ovid excelling in the "tender strokes," 
Vergil in his "masterly" descriptions of actions and persons, 
he says, "Yet before I leave Virgil, I must own the vanity to 
tell you, and by you the world, that he has been my master 
in this poem: I have followed him everywhere, I know not 
with what success, but I am sure with diUgence enough: 
my images are many of them copied from him, and the 
rest are imitations of him. My expressions also are as 
near as the idioms of the two languages would admit of in 
translation." To illustrate this, many a line and stanza 
might be quoted. The line, 

Beyond the year, and out of Heaven's high way, 

for example, is Vergil's extra anni solisque vias, and the 
simile. 

So glides some trodden serpent on the grass, 
And long behind his wounded volume trails, 

is an imitation of the lines from the third Georgic, describing 
the wounded snake, 

cum medii nexus extremaeque agmina caudae 
solvuntur, tardosque trahit sinus ultimus orbis. 

(11. 423-4) 

Probably the most familiar passage of all is the simile of 
the bees, which owes much to the passages in the fourth 
Georgic and the first Aeneid}^ 

"CJf. Aen. 1.430-6, and Georg. 4.149-169. 



162 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

All hands employed, the royal work grows warm; 

Like labouring bees on a long summer's day, 
Some sound the trumpet for the rest to swarm. 

And some on bells of tasted lilies play; 

With gluey wax some new foundation lay 

Of virgin-combs, which from the roof are hung; 

Some armed within doors upon duty stay 
Or tend the sick or educate the young. 

In many other places, not only in the Annus Mirahilis, 
but also in his other poems, Dryden uses similarly close 
imitations of Vergil, borrowing from this "best poet," as 
he called him, more frequently than from any other. It is 
the beginning of that open and avowed imitation and adop- 
tion of passages from Vergil which is so characteristic of the 
pastoral and didactic poems of the next century. 

While the influence of Vergil in this period seems to be 
in general a thing of externals, in reality it goes deeper 
than that, and the surface imitation of the style of the 
Eclogues, the form of the Aeneid, and the general plan and 
method of the Georgics is a mere outward manifestation of a 
real appreciation of that quality in which Vergil is supreme 
among classic poets, the technical perfection of his work. 
Pope and Thomson and their contemporaries show little 
trace of a conception of the spirit of Vergil, of the sense of 
pathos in his poetry, but this is simply saying that they were 
not Romanticists, and that therefore the subjective ele- 
ment in literature did not appeal to them. 

It was a very positive advantage, however, that these 
neo-classic critics and poets had, of perceiving and imitating 
and praising that phase of Vergil's genius which has never 
been questioned, but which had never been fully appre- 
ciated before. They represented a distinct advance over 
the somewhat childlike enjoyment of the mere story which 



DRYDEN AND POPE 163 

was to be found in Chaucer and the romancers, and they 
paved the way for the fuller appreciation of the nineteenth 
century, which, while it found beside the mere perfection 
of style in the work of Vergil a vivid imagination and a poetic 
insight into human life, still continued to emphasize the 
beauty of his verse as the means by which he was enabled 
to give his message to the world. 

Undoubtedly the classic school found too in the work of 
Vergil a certain regularizing and standardizing of poetic 
forms, which they welcomed especially in their reaction 
from the exaggerations of the Marinists. He gave them 
models which they could follow within the bounds of common 
sense, and the weight of his authority and his example 
added value to their work in their own eyes. Their poetry 
they felt was no spasmodic mushroom growth, ruled by the 
whims of the individual, but had its roots fixed in antiquity, 
and was like Vergil's own oak, which 

quantum vertice ad auras 
aetherias, tantum radice in Tartara tendit. 

The couplet as Pope used it was one of the most remark- 
able things in the history of English poetry, and it seems 
quite evident that not only did he admire Vergil for the 
finish of his lines, but he also tried to approach the 
same perfection. There is no possibility of setting side by 
side the hexameters of Vergil and the couplets of Pope and 
saying, "The polish of these English lines is in imitation 
of these Latin verses," for the nature of the two meters is 
too diverse. But each is chiseled out of marble, although 
the tools are different, and Pope undoubtedly got his inspira- 
tion for the practice of this art from a study of the methods 
and results of Vergil's workmanship. It is far more probable 
that this came from the Latin than from the Greek, not 
only because Vergil was preeminent in this quality, but also 



164 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

because Pope's genius, like that of others of his time, was 
essentially Latin. The influence of Vergil in this respect 
is hard to analyze, and any detailed consideration of it 
must consist largely in a citation of passages in which Pope 
has actually borrowed the phraseology of his master. The 
deeper significance of the attraction which Vergil exerted 
on the EngUsh master of form must be felt rather than 
seen and described. 

The Eclogues of Vergil Pope thought the "sweetest poems 
in the world," and it was this sweetness of versification that 
he endeavored to imitate in his Pastorals. He felt that 
he had succeeded, for even late in life he regarded these 
early poems as the most correct and musical of his works. 
Many of his contemporaries agreed with him, one admirer 
exclaiming. 

Oh could thy Virgil from his orb look down, 
He'd view a courser that might match his own! 

And Lord Lyttleton fancied the shade of Vergil addressing 

Pope as 

Great Bard! whose numbers I myself inspire, 
To whom I gave my own harmonious lyre. 

Between the ages of thirteen and fifteen, Pope composed 
an epic poem, Alcander, Prince of Rhodes, imitating the style 
of all the great epic poets. But the poem suffered the fate 
which Vergil planned for the Aeneid. At sixteen, however, 
according to his own statement. Pope wrote his four Pastorals, 
named after the four seasons of the year, a scheme which 
he borrowed from some of the earlier pastoral poetry, and 
which perhaps furnished the chief suggestion to Thomson 
for his arrangement of the Seasons. They were not published, 
however, until 1709, when Jacob Tonson included them in 
the sixth part of the Poetical Miscellany, the first volumes 



DRYDEN AND POPE 165 

of which had been compiled by Dryden. Undoubtedly 
both the poems themselves and the Discourse on Pastoral 
Poetry which preceded them, underwent considerable revi- 
sion before they appeared in print. They had circulated, 
however, among the literary men of the time in manuscript, 
and had received high praise. Walsh, in a letter to Wycher- 
ley, in April, 1705, wrote, "It is not flattery at all to say 
that Virgil had written nothing so good at his Age." 

The Preface, or Discourse on Pastoral Poetry, which 
Walsh called "very judicious and learned," is, to the modern 
reader, a collection of rather trite and obvious remarks gath- 
ered from Rapin, Fontenelle, and the Preface to Dryden's 
Virgil. Of chief interest to us is Pope's statement at the 
close that whatever merit his own pastorals might possess 
"is to be attributed to some good old authors, whose works, 
as I had leisure to study, so I hope I have not wanted care 
to imitate." 

That these good old authors are Theocritus, Vergil and 
Spenser, is sufficiently obvious. The opening Hues of Spring 
are in imitation of those of Vergil's sixth Eclogue, and those 
of the three succeeding Pastorals follow closely the first lines 
of the pastorals of Spenser, Vergil and Theocritus. There 
is good evidence, however, that Vergil was more in the 
mind of Pope as he wrote these poems than his English or 
his Greek model. "The collection of passages imitated from 
the classics," Warton tells us in his edition of Pope's Works, 
"marked in the margin with the letter P. was made by the 
accurate and learned Mr. Bowyer the Printer, and given to 
Pope at his desire, as appears from the MSS. Notes of Mr. 
Bowyer now before me." With practically no exception, 
the passages so marked are from Vergil, and careful search 
will reveal more that Mr. Bowyer failed to find or Pope did 
not care to note. 

The temptation to which all commentators are open, 



166 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

however, is to discover parallels where none exist. They 
are prone to go to extremes such as moved Tennyson to 
complaint and Landor to ridicule. The phraseology of 
Vergil was so familiar to Pope that it was inevitable that 
he should echo it frequently. It is hardly safe, however, 
to assume that when he says "a secret transport touched 
the conscious swain," he "had in his eye," as one of his 
editors puts it, the line from the first book of the Aeneid, 

Latonae taciturn pertemptant gaudia pectus; 

(Aen. 1. 502) 

or that because he says. 

But now the reeds shall hang on yonder tree, 

he is thinking definitely of the verse. 

Hie arguta sacra pendebit fistula pinu. 

{Ed. 7. 24) 

But it is perfectly possible to point out line after line which 
is manifestly written with the words of Vergil in mind. 
Perhaps the diction of Dry den's translation of Vergil had 
some influence on Pope's phraseology. But everyone who 
has studied with any degree of care the various transla- 
tions of any author, will readily admit the difficulty which 
two men find in discovering different words and phrases for 
the same passage, unless the translation be very free and 
far from the original. 

It is an interesting fact that often the earlier version of 
the lines in Pope's Pastorals is nearer the Latin than the later 
form in which they appeared. Perhaps Pope's maturer 
judgment advised him to avoid such close imitation. A 
good example of this is to be found in the lines in Summer, 

As in the crystal spring I view my face, 
Fresh rising blushes paint the watery glass. 



DRYDEN AND POPE 167 

Originally these ran, 

Oft in the crystal spring I'd cast a view, 
And equalled Hylas if the glass be true. 

This version makes far more appropriate the parallel to 
which the note marked "P" calls attention: 

nuper me in litore vidi, 
cum placidum ventis staret mare, non ego Daphnim 
iudice te metuam, si numquam fallit imago. 

{Ed. 2. 25-27) 

Spring, the first of Pope's Pastorals, though it opens with 
the lines from the sixth Eclogue of Vergil, is in its form an 
imitation of the third and seventh, especially the third. 
Two shepherds engage in a contest in song, calling upon 
another swain to decide between them. Pope's Strephon 
stakes a lamb, Vergil's Damoetas, a heifer; in each case 
the opponent offers a bowl which is described at length. 
Pope prided himself upon his imitation of Vergil's "quis 
fuit alter?" in the hesitation of his Daphnis at the word 
"Zodiac." In a speech copied straight from Vergil, the 
umpire tells the two contestants to begin and "sing by 
turns." They obey, and in alternate quatrains which are 
a patchwork of ideas and phrases, now from the third Eclogue, 
now from the seventh, they recount the praises of their 
sweethearts. They tell of the kind glances or inviting nods 
which they have received, of how they have been won to 
agreement with the likes and dislikes of the maidens, and 
of the effect which the presence or absence of the "nymphs" 
has upon the face of Nature. The pastoral closes with the 
putting of two riddles, and the inabihty of the judge to 
decide between the two singers. All these features may be 
found in Vergil, in a less artificial form. Pope complains 
that Vergil refines upon Theocritus and is inferior to him in 



168 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

simplicity and propriety of style; but he himself out- 
Vergils Vergil in his treatment of his original. 

Summer, the second Pastoral, is again a combination of 
two of Vergil's Eclogues, the second and the tenth. Some 
hints for the opening address to Dr. Garth are taken from 
the dedication to Pollio in the eighth Eclogue, and the 
image of the sympathy of dumb Nature with the lover's 
grief is found in the first lines of the same poem. But like 
Corydon and Gallus, Alexis sits bewailing his hopeless love 
till the woods answer him. He calls upon the Muses, re- 
proaching them for their absence in lines closely imitative 
of that passage in the Gallus which has been made especially 
famous because of Milton's use of it. Accompanying his 
song on the flute which Colin bequeathed to him, as Damoe- 
tas had given his to Corydon, Alexis implores his love to 
come and share with him the delights of the country, remind- 
ing her, as Gallus assured his Lycoris, that 

Descending gods have found Elysium here. 

He closes with the complaint that the coolness of evening 
brings him no relief from the scorching fire of love, but he 
does not follow this lament with the half-cynical remonstrance 
of Corydon with himself for neglecting his pastoral duties. 
The original of the third Pastoral is given in one of the 
notes marked "P." It "consists of two parts, like the 
Vlllth of Virgil." With full realization of his dependence 
upon the Latin eclogue, Pope calls upon the "Mantuan 
nymphs" for their aid. He sings of two shepherds, Hylas 
and Aegon, of whom 

This mourned a faithless, that an absent, Love. 

Hylas, however, is the first to sing, and his lament closes 
with a cry of joy, like that of the second singer in the Phar- 
maceutria of Vergil, 



DRYDEN AND POPE 169 

Ye powers, what pleasing frenzy soothes my mind! 
Do lovers dream, or is my Delia kind? 
She comes, my Delia comes! — now cease my lay, 
And cease, ye gales, to bear my sighs away ! 

The return of Delia is effected, however, without any use 
of enchantment. Aegon is without hope, for his mistress is 
faithless, and his "mournful lay," with its bitter "I know 
thee, Love" (nunc scio quid sit Amor), ends with a threat of 
suicide like that which closes the first half of Vergil's poem. 
In both parts of the Pastoral is a refrain, similar to those in 
Vergil. In form, this Pastoral follows more closely than 
any of the others a single model, but its diction shows less 
Vergilian influence than either of the preceding. 

The latter fact is true also of the fourth Pastoral, the 
Daphne. In general this elegy is modeled on the fifth of 
Vergil which is a lament for Daphnis, put into the mouths 
of two shepherds. Pope puts the whole song into the lips 
of Thyrsis, including the reassurance that Daphne still 
lives and 

wondering mounts on high 
Above the clouds, above the starry sky, 

just as 

candidus insuetum miratur limen Olympi 
sub pedibusque videt nubes et sidera Daphnis. 

(EcL 5. 56-57) 

This was Pope's favorite among his Pastorals, but it must be 
said that the artificiality of the whole machinery of *' Nymphs 
and Sylvans" and "weeping loves" with their "golden darts" 
seems more apparent and more offensive here than any- 
where else. Possibly it is because we are forced to com- 
pare it, not only with the original in the Latin, but with the 
Lycidas of Milton as well, in which much of the same material 
was used. 



170 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

Windsor Forest, the first part of which was written at 
the same time that the Pastorals were, and the second 
part in 1713, when the entire poem was pubHshed, shows, 
especially in the first part, many characteristics similar to 
those of the Pastorals. There is not so much imitation of 
Vergil here, however. Pope is indebted largely to Statius 
and Ovid for suggestions and passages. It is interesting 
to notice that he uses the first line of his Pastorals as the 
last of Windsor Forest, as Vergil had made the first line of 
his Eclogues the last of his Georgics. 

Unquestionably the best known of the Eclogues is the 
Pollio, the poem which was partially responsible for Vergil's 
peculiar reputation in the Middle Ages ; and the best known 
of Pope's pastoral poems is probably the Messiah, A Sacred 
Eclogue, in Imitation of VirgiVs Pollio. This is not the 
place to discuss the identity of the child of Vergil's poem. 
It is sufficient to say that the tradition that it referred to 
the birth of Jesus persisted down to Pope's day and beyond 
it. The general theory at that time was the one which 
Augustine had advanced, that Vergil himself was not in- 
spired, but was adopting the ideas of a Sibylline prophecy of 
Christ. "In reading several passages of the prophet Isaiah," 
wrote Pope in the Advertisement prefixed to the poem, 
"which foretell the coming of Christ and the felicities attend- 
ing it, I could not but observe a remarkable parity between 
many of the thoughts and those in the Pollio of Virgil. This 
will not seem surprising, when we reflect that the eclogue 
was taken from a Sibylline prophecy on the same subject. 
One may judge that Virgil did not copy it line for line, but 
selected such ideas as best agreed with the nature of pastoral 
poetry, and disposed them in that manner which served 
most to beautify his piece. I have endeavored the same 
in this imitation of him, though without admitting any- 
thing of my own; since it was written with this particular 



DRYDEN AND POPE 171 

view, that the reader, by comparing the several thoughts, 
might see how far the images and descriptions of the Prophet 
are superior to those of the Poet. But as I fear I have prej- 
udiced them by my management, I shall subjoin the pas- 
sages of Isaiah, and those of Virgil, under the same disad- 
vantage of a literal translation." In view of this, it is natural 
that Pope should be nearer Isaiah than Vergil in his lan- 
guage, and such is the case. He does introduce an appro- 
priate passage from the fifth Eclogue, 

intonsi montes, ipsae iam carmina rapes, 
ipsa sonant arbusta, Deus, deus ille, Menalca! 

(Eel. 5. 63-64) 

But because of his express desire to make the language of 
Isaiah appear more beautiful than that of Vergil, he has 
"managed" in almost every case to elaborate upon the 
ideas of the prophet rather than those of the poet. For 
instance, he writes. 

The smiling infant in his hand shall take 
The crested basilisk and speckled snake. 
Pleased the green lustre of the scales survey, 
And with their forky tongue shall innocently play. 

This is obviously an adornment of the Hebrew, "And 
the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the 
weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice' den," 
rather than of the simple Latin, " Occidet et serpens." John- 
son's translation of the Messiah of Pope into Latin repays 
careful study. It is significant that it is not Vergilian, 
which it could scarcely avoid being if the English had been 
strongly colored with the language of the Pollio. He does 
use the phrase, "Priscae vestigia fraudis," and also "Qualis 



172 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

rerum nascitur ordo," which have no foundation in Pope's 
verse, but these are due to Johnson's memory of Vergil 
rather than Pope's. 

In the same number of Tonson's Miscellany in which 
Pope's Pastorals appeared, were printed the Pastorals of 
Ambrose Philips. These were imitations of Spenser rather 
than of the classics, and Philips, like his master, discarded 
classical names, and in many ways tried to avoid setting 
and allusions which were inappropriate to shepherd life in 
England, although he by no means lost sight of his Vergil. 
In the very passage in which he praised the song of Colin 
Clout, he used Vergilian lines: 

Drawn by the magick of th' enticing sound 
What troops of mute admirers flock'd around ! 
The steerlings left their food, and creatures wild 
By nature formed insensibly grew mild." 

These poems were responsible for one of Pope's numerous 
literary quarrels. In the Guardian, No. 32, appeared a 
paper cast in the form of a pastoral allegory, in which the 
names of Theocritus, Vergil, Spenser, and Philips were 
given as those of the descendants of the ancient king of 
the shepherds. Pope, incensed at the omission of his 
name, and the preference shown to his rival, wrote a paper 
and sent it anonymously to the Guardian in which he ridi- 
culed the work of Philips and exalted his own. But it 
was done in such a way that he appeared to be praising 
his rival, and the criticism was taken in good faith by Steele, 
who submitted it to Pope before accepting it, being unwill- 
ing to hurt his feehngs. Pope affected magnanimity, and 
allowed it to be pubUshed, but his irony was so subtle that 
the majority of his readers, hke Steele, missed the point. 

" Cf. Ed. 8. 2-4. 



DRYDEN AND POPE 173 

In 1714, Gay published his Shepherd's Week, doubtless at 
the instigation of Pope, with the intention of holding the 
simple, homely pastoral up to ridicule. The "Proeme to 
the Courteous Reader" announces the purpose of the poet 
to keep his shepherds and shepherdesses true to nature. 
And in spite of the ridiculous names of Cloddipole and 
Blouzelinda, Bumkinet and Clumsilis, and the obvious 
burlesque of the conventional forms and language. Gay's 
own poetic gift and love for nature have made of these 
pastorals something more delightful than a mere satire. 
Many of his readers thought that he was satirizing, not the 
eighteenth century pastoral, but Vergil himself, and there 
is reason for this belief, for his burlesques are nearer to the 
Latin than many of the serious imitations. 

But the burlesques of Gay, of Shenstone, of Jago, of 
Walsh, of the "Right Honourable L. M. W. M.," and of the 
Dean of Saint Patrick's himself, clever and numerous as 
they were, apparently had no deterring effect on the pro- 
duction of Eclogues. After a comparative rest during 
the latter half of the seventeenth century, the form sprang 
up with renewed vigor and greater artificiality, but with 
less religious and social allegory and satire. It was such a 
convenient vehicle for the expression of the despair of a 
lover or of grief over the death of the Queen or some 
noble patron, that no amount of ridicule could stop it, 
and it finally died out only with the birth of the new love 
for nature which could not admit the artificiality of such 
an outworn form. With some exceptions, such as that of 
Ramsay's Gentle Shepherd, even when the attempt was 
made to keep the characters and surroundings true to English 
country life, the result was absurd in its artificiality. Nearly 
every poet and poetaster who lived and wrote in the first 
thirty or forty years of the eighteenth century, tried his 



174 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

hand at at least one pastoral/^ and for the most part it is 
true that, as Churchill says, 

Then the rude Theocrite is ransack'd o'er, 
And courtly Maro call'd from Mincio's shore; 
Sicilian Muses o'er our mountains roam, 
Easy and free as if they were at home. 

The influence of the Aeneid on Pope is not so definitely 
marked as that of the Eclogues. That he was familiar 
with it and that he made frequent use of it, is obvious, 
but his works display no such careful and systematic imita- 
tion of this poem as of the pastorals. In his translation of 
the first book of the Thehaid of Statins, one is tempted to 
find Vergilian phraseology. But it is difficult to decide 
in most cases whether the influence is direct or not, for 
Statins himself was such a close student of Vergil that his 
Latin is greatly affected by the language of the poet whom 
he so deeply reverenced. There are a few instances, however, 

" The following is a Ust of the chief examples of the eighteenth 
century pastoral. Undoubtedly many other writers, too obscure for 
their works to have survived in separate form or to have been included 
in the standard collections of poetry, were guilty of similar efforts. 
This list includes only pastorals of the type of the formal eclogue, 
not the pastoral Ijrrics or ballads, whose name was also legion. Am- 
brose Philips, Pastorals; Gay, Shepherd's Week, Eclogues; Thomas 
Warton, Five Pastoral Eclogues; Ramsay, Richy and Sandy; Collins, 
Persian Eclogues; Shenstone, Colemira, On Certain Eclogues; Churchill, 
The Prophecy of Famine; Cunningham, Palaemon; Wm. Thompson, 
The Magi; Wm. Broome, Daphnis and Lycidas, A Pastoral; Jago, 
Ardenna, The Scavengers; John Scott, Moral Eclogues, Amoebean Eclogues; 
John Logan (?), Damon, Menalcas and Meliboeus; Blacklock, A Pastoral; 
Right Hon. L. M. W. M., Six Town Eclogues; Swift, A Town Eclogue; 
Lyttelton, The Progress of Love, A Monody; Prior, A Pastoral to the 
Bishop of Ely; Congreve, The Mourning Muse of Alexis; Fenton, 
Florelio; Pomfret, A Pastoral Essay on the Death of Queen Mary; Walsh, 
Pastoral Eclogues, The Golden Age Restored; Barford, The Great Shep- 
herd; Wm. Mason, Musaeus, The Dean and the Squire. 



DRYDEN AND POPE 175 

where Pope undoubtedly had Vergil in mind. In the 
description of Mercury, for example, which in the original 
is strongly reminiscent of the Aeneid, the translator could 
not refrain from reproducing the Maia genitum of Vergil in 
"son of May," although there was nothing in Statins to 
justify it. 

But the practice of the writers of this period was to spend 
more time criticizing the Aeneid than imitating it. Some 
such criticism we find in Pope's Preface to his translation 
of Homer, with the usual contrast between the "invention" 
of Homer and the "judgment" of Vergil, and the con- 
clusion that the Greek poet is the superior in most respects. 
The mock epic, however, was a favorite form of writing 
at this time, and afforded opportunities for Vergilian imi- 
tations. The 1728 edition of the Dunciad began. 

Books and the man I sing, the first who brings 
The Smithfield muses to the ears of kings, 

and Pope's own notes to the edition of 1729 cite many 
passages from Vergil as the originals of his lines. ^^ Burlesque 
imitations of the conventions of the Aeneid are to be found 
in that "heroi-comical" poem, the Rape of the Lock. The 
second paragraph, like that of the Aeneid, inquires the 
causes of so mighty a contest: 

Say what strange motive, goddess! could compel 
A well-bred lord to assault a gentle belle? 

and there follows the query. 

And in soft bosoms dwells such mighty rage? 

13 One of the appendices to the 1729 edition is the Virgilius Restau- 
ratus: seu Martini Scribleri Summi Critici Castigationum in Aeneidem. 
There follows a "specimen" containing a number of burlesque emenda- 
tions, all in Latin. 



176 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

which corresponds to the famous question in the Aeneid, 
"tantaene animis caelestibus irae?" It is needless to 
quote in full the passages beginning, "The powers gave 
ear, and granted half his prayer," "O thoughtless mortals! 
ever blind to fate," "While fish in streams or birds delight 
in air," "But anxious cares the pensive nymph oppressed," 
"Happy! ah ten times happy," and others, each of which 
will call to mind the Vergilian passage which is cleverly 
parodied. The speech of Ariel to the sylphs is in true 
epic style, and might be paralleled in Vergil. The punish- 
ments which he threatens do not need the mention of Ixion 
to remind us of the sixth book of the Aeneid, and the reader 
has probably made for himself the comparison between the 
hard-hearted baron and Aeneas before he reaches the couplet, 

Not half so fix'd the Trojan could remain, 
While Anna begg'd and Dido raged in vain. 

Martinus Scriblerus, the creation of Swift and his 
fellow club-members, realized the necessity for imitation 
in an epic poem, for in his Recipe for making such a 
concoction, he gives definite directions based on Vergil. 
"For a Tempest. Take Eurus, Zephyr, Auster and 
Boreas, and cast them together in one verse: add to 
them of rain, lightning, thunder (the loudest you can) 
quantum sufficit: mix your clouds and billows well together 
till they foam, and thicken your description here and there 
with a quicksand. Brew your tempest well in your head, 
before you set it a blowing." "For a Burning Town. If 
such a description is necessary (because it is certain there 
is one in Virgil) old Troy is ready burnt to your hands." 

Martinus Scriblerus was later made the hero of the Scrib- 
leriad: an Heroic Poem, by Richard Owen Cambridge, the 
chief exponent and apologist of the mock-epic genre. The 
aim of most of the other writers of the mock-heroic poem was 



DRYDEN AND POPE 177 

satirical. Dryden's MacFlecknoe and Pope's Dunciad were 
the models for a whole series of satires in more or less mock- 
heroic form, and Hilliads, Consuliads, and Rosciads were 
the fashion for many years. Swift's Battle of the Books, 
though in prose, belongs to the same general type, and 
Fielding's "prose epic," Tom Jones, contains many a bur- 
lesque of the epic style, especially of the Homeric or Ver- 
gilian simile. On the other hand there is Gay's Fan, which 
seems more like the Rape of the Lock, with its graceful fun- 
making at the expense of society. Somerville's Hobhinol, 
or the Rural Games, and Paul Wliitehead's Gymnasiad 
both contain echoes of the fifth book of the Aeneid, and in 
burlesque fashion tell of foot-races, wrestling-matches, and 
boxing-bouts, for which the Vergilian account furnishes the 
basis. Somerville's purpose was partially satirical also, 
for he says in his dedication to Hogarth, ''In this at least 
let us both agree, to make Vice and Folly the Object of our 
Ridicule." 

Cambridge, however, does not think this type of mock- 
epic the model to be followed. The true mock-heroic poem, 
he says in his mock-serious Preface, is one which has the 
burlesquing of the classic epics as its sole purpose. He 
holds up Don Quixote as a model example of the species, 
but discards the satires of Dryden and Pope because they 
have a divided aim. The chief requisite of a mock-epic is 
that it should follow the ancients as nearly as possible, and 
that there should be absolute propriety between the hero 
and the subject. His hero, Scriblerus, is an eminently proper 
hero for a mock-epic, because, as the readers of his Memoirs 
will remember, he was brought up on a knowledge of the 
classics. There will be, therefore, in the poem, many 
passages intended as imitations of the ancients, which none 
but those who are familiar with the classics will understand. 
With this introduction, he plunges into the story of his 



178 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

hero, who is driven by "wrathful Saturn's unrelenting rage" 
through many dangers on land and sea. Overtaken by a 
sandstorm in the desert, guided by a comet like that which 
pointed the way for Aeneas and Anchises on their depar- 
ture from Troy, he meets a band of pilgrims to whom he 
relates his previous adventures. These include a storm at 
sea, an encounter with the Acrosticks, whose leader proph- 
esies that he and his followers will be forced to drink 
iron, his love-affair with the Queen of the country on whose 
shores he lands, which is told in great detail and with almost 
continual burlesque of the story of Aeneas and Dido, and the 
funeral games for a dead Acrostick. Not only these inci- 
dents, but also many in the succeeding history of Scriblerus, 
show that Cambridge is thinking chiefly of the Aeneid in 
his burlesque. 

Thus the most elaborate example of this type of poetry 
is based largely on Vergil, and this is the main phase of 
the formal imitation of the Aeneid in this period. The 
bones of the epic convention, stirred by the breath of Augus- 
tan criticism, are clothed with flesh again only to don the 
cap and bells. 



CHAPTER VIII 
THOMSON AND THE DIDACTIC POETS 

The pastoral and epic traditions in the eighteenth cen- 
tury both furnished material for burlesque and satire, even 
at the very height of the popularity of these types of verse. 
But the followers of Thomson were of too serious a 
cast to make fun of themselves or of each other; and with 
the exception of Swift and Gay, whose City Shower and 
Trivia were both written long before the Seasons appeared, 
all the imitators of the Georgics of Vergil were in sober 
earnest. The didactic temper was a part of the spirit of 
the age in the eighteenth century, and it manifested itself, 
not only in these professed imitations of the Georgics, but 
in the verse essays and moral epistles which were a favorite 
form of poetry with Pope and his followers. Although 
the type developed along the lines of moral and spiritual 
instruction as well, the poems which embody practical 
instructions for the farmer, the hunter, the shepherd, or the 
gardener are those which owe the most to Vergil. Yet 
many a Preface to a poem treating of any subject from Sick- 
ness to the Pleasures of Imagination, and many a passage 
in such poems, acknowledged tacitly or openly that he was 
the source of inspiration. 

James Thomson was by far the greatest and most in- 
fluential poet of the group which combined rules for the 
countryman with descriptions of nature. His influence was 
felt, not only in England, but also on the continent, in 
France and Germany, both in descriptive poetry and in 
purely didactic verse. He was not the pioneer in this 

179 



180 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

field, however, for Garth's Dispensary had appeared in 1699 
and John Phihps' Cyder in 1706. Nor was he the most 
thoroughly didactic, and the precepts of many of his fellows 
sound more VergiUan than his descriptions. The opening 
of Cyder, the first example of the didactic poem of nature, 
is quite like the Georgics: 

What soil the apple loves, what care is due 
To orchats, timeliest when to press the fruits. 

Some further lines in the same poem express the ideal of 
this group of poets illustrated by the practice of Vergil, 
an ideal which they all tried to attain, but which none 
but Thomson succeeded in approaching: 

Nor is it hard to beautify each month 

With files of parti-colour'd fruits, that please 

The tongue and view at once. So Maro's Muse, 

Thrice sacred Muse! commodious precepts gives 

Instructive to the swains, not wholly bent 

On what is gainful : sometimes she diverts 

From solid counsels, shows the force of love 

In savage beasts; how virgin face divine 

Attracts the helpless youth through storms and waves, 

Alone, in deep of night : then she describes 

The Scythian winter, nor disdains to sing 

How under ground the rude Riphaean race 

Mimic brisk Cyder with the brakes' product wild ; 

Sloes pounded. Hips, and Servis' harshest juice. 

Thus he returns to his subject, and in Miltonic blank verse, 
which is the almost invariable medium of these didactic 
poets, he endeavors to mingle poetry with precepts as his 
master had done. So, nearly forty years later, Akenside 
appeals to the same authority to justify his digressions from 
the subject, saying in his prefatory discussion of the design 



THOMSON AND THE DIDACTIC POETS 181 

of his poem on the Pleasures of the Imagination, that the 
author has been led "to introduce some sentiments which 
may perhaps be looked upon as not quite direct to the 
subject; but since they bear an obvious relation to it, the 
authority of Virgil, the faultless model of didactic poetry, 
will best support him in this particular." 

In Lyttelton's fourteenth Dialogue of the Dead, that be- 
tween Pope and Boileau, the French critic asks his Enghsh 
disciple, "Who is the poet that arrived soon after you in 
Elysium, whom I saw Spenser lead in and present to Virgil, 
as the author of a poem resembUng the Georgicsf On his 
head was a garland of the several kinds of flowers that 
blow in each season, with evergreens intermixed." And 
Pope gives the obvious answer, "Your description points out 
Thomson." Thus the friend and editor of the leader of the 
didactic nature poets of the eighteenth century recognized 
the fact that Vergil furnished the model on which the Seasons 
was formed. But it must be remembered that the garland 
of flowers and evergreens was largely Thomson's own. 
There is great danger that a discussion which pretends to 
treat only one side of a subject should leave a one-sided 
impression. While Thomson was undoubtedly Vergil's 
debtor in many respects, both in the general form of his 
work and in a large number of details, yet he differed from 
him in nearly as many points. His fundamental aim was 
to describe rather than to teach, and it is rather to some of 
his followers, such as Dyer and Somerville, that the term 
"didactic" should be applied, for it is more expressive of the 
purpose of their work than of that of Thomson. Not that 
Vergil never used description in the Georgics purely for its 
own sake, for he showed the hand of a master in such a 
picture as that of the garden of the senex Corycius or that 
of the life under the water in the episode of Aristaeus; 
nor that Thomson never taught, for he did it frequently and 



182 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

with true Vergilian effect, as in the account of the pre- 
cautions to be taken against the plague of locusts. But it 
is true that both his long descriptions and his moral re- 
flections are foreign to the manner of Vergil. Thomson 
mingled imitation and originality in his work much after 
the fashion of his own advice to the fisherman overtaken by 
the heat of noon : 

There let the classic page thy fancy lead 
Through rural scenes; such as the Mantuan swain 
Paints in the matchless harmony of song ; 
Or catch thyself the landscape, gliding swift 
Athwart imagination's vivid eye. 

In the Preface to the second edition of Winter, which 
appeared in June, 1726, Thomson makes a plea for the 
adoption of more elevated subjects for poetry. No subject, 
he claims, is more elevating or more amusing than Nature, 
and the best poets, ancient and modern, have been happiest 
when at leisure to meditate and sing her works. He in- 
stances the book of Job, and then continues, "It was this 
devotion to the works of Nature that, in his Georgics, in- 
spired the rural Virgil to write so inimitably; and who 
can forbear joining with him in this declaration of his, 
which has been the rapture of the ages." There follows 
the well-known passage from the second Georgic,^ where 
the poet longs for the opportunity to study the processes 
of Nature, or at least to observe her manifestations. In 
this place, Thomson has made a commonplace transla- 
tion of these verses, but later, in the closing lines of Autumn, 
he has given a fine paraphrase of the passage, which was 
evidently a favorite one with him, for it is recognizable 
in several other places. The lines in Autumn, coming as 
they do at the end of the last-written portion of the Seasons, 

1 Georg. 2. 475-486. 



THOMSON AND THE DIDACTIC POETS 183 

sum up his doctrine and also serve to emphasize the bond 
between him and Vergil: 

O Nature! all-sufficient! over all! 

Enrich me with the knowledge of thy works! 

Snatch me to heaven; thy rolhng wonders there, 

World beyond world, in infinite extent. 

Profusely scattered o'er the blue immense. 

Shew me; their motions, periods and their laws, 

Give me to scan ; thro' the disclosing deep 

Light my blind way: the mineral Strata there; 

Thrust, blooming, thence, the vegetable world; 

O'er that the rising system, more complex, 

Of animals; and higher still, the mind. 

The varied scene of quick-compounded thought. 

And where the mixing passions endless shift; 

These ever open to my ravish'd eye; 

A search, the flight of time can ne'er exhaust! 

But if to that unequal; if the blood. 

In sluggish streams about my heart, forbid 

That best ambition; under closing shades. 

Inglorious, lay me by the lowly brook. 

And whisper to my dreams. 

Thus both by express statement and by implication, 
Thomson refers to the authority of Vergil to justify his 
choice of subject, and again in Spring he says, 

Nor ye who live 
In luxury and ease, in pomp and pride. 
Think these lost themes unworthy of your ear; 
Such themes as these the rural Maro sung 
To wide-imperial Rome, in the full height 
Of elegance and taste, by Greece refined. 

It would be easy and tiresome to fill many pages with 
parallel passages from Vergil and Thomson, some of them 
with little justification, the similarity often arising merely 



184 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

from the likeness in subject-matter. But there are many- 
lines which offer conclusive evidence that Thomson was 
writing with his eye on Vergil as well as on the object. In 
discussing these, it will be best to consider the four parts of 
the poem in the order in which they were written, rather 
than in the order in which they are usually printed. 

In the form in which we now read Winter, there are more 
Vergilian reminiscences than in any other portion of the 
Seasons, with the possible exception of the concluding lines 
of Autumn. The picture of the ox covered with snow and 
of the deer buried in the drifts, the instructions to the 
shepherds for the care of their flocks in the cold weather, 
the account of the storm at sea, and above all the enumera- 
tion of the signs of approaching tempest, owe much to Vergil. 
The last two are worth considering in detail. The lines, 

Turns from its bottom the discoloured deep, 

The black night that sits immense around. 



and 



. . . the mountain billows to the clouds 
In dreadful tumult swelled, 

. . . now the inflated wave 

Straining they scale, and now impetuous shoot 

Into the secret chambers of the deep, 

contain all the essential features of the description of the 
storm in the first book of the Aeneid. There are to be 
found the corresponding lines, 

totumque a sedibus imis 
una Eurusque Notusque ruunt, (11. 84-85) 

. . . ponto nox incubat atra, (1. 89) 

. . . fluctusque ad sidera tollit, (1. 103) 



THOMSON AND THE DIDACTIC POETS 185 

hi summo in fluctu pendent; his unda dehiscens 
terrain inter fluctus aperit, furit aestus harenis, 

(II. 106-107) 

and again in the account of Scylla and Charybdis, 

toUimur in caelum curvato gurgite, et idem 
subducta ad manis imos desedimus unda. 

(Aen. 3. 564-5) 

The most interesting thing about these echoes of Vergil is 
that none of them appears in the early editions of Winter. 
In the texts of the two 1726 editions, the passage is almost 
entirely free from any suggestion of the Latin. In the 1730 
edition, most of the Vergilian features are present, and that 
of 1744 completes the transformation by changing 

The loud night, that bids the wave arise 
to 

The black night that sits immense around. 

The same thing is true of the description of the signs of 
approaching storm, which is closely modeled on certain 
lines in the first Georgic. The brief passage of six lines in 
the 1726 edition is practically without indication of Ver- 
gilian influence. In the text of 1730, seven lines are added, 
four of which are distinctly Vergilian, and in 1744 the pas- 
sage is expanded to thirty-five lines chiefly by the addition 
of what are virtually translations of the Latin. Of the fol- 
lowing passage, all except the first line, the first part of the 
fourth, and a few words in the last two, are new in the 1744 
text: 

The stars obtuse emit a shivering ray; 

Or frequent seem to shoot athwart the gloom, 

And long behind them trail the whitening blaze. 

Snatch'd in short eddies, plays the wither'd leaf; 

And on the flood the dancing feather floats. 



186 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

With broadened nostrils to the sky upturned, 
The conscious heifer snuffs the stormy gale. 
Even as the matron, at her nightly task. 
With pensive labour draws the flaxen thread, 
The wasted taper and the crackling flame 
Foretell the blast. But chief the plumy race, 
The tenants of the sky, its changes speak. 
. . . The cormorant on high 
Wheels from the deep, and screams along the land. 
Loud shrieks the soaring hern; and with wild wing, 
The circling sea-fowl cleave the flaky clouds. 

The models for this may be found in the following lines from 
the first Georgic: 

saepe etiam stellas vento impendente videbis 
praecipitis caelo labi, noctisque per umbram 
flanmiarum longos a tergo albescere tractus; 
saepe levem paleam et frondes voUtare caducas, 
aut summa nantis in aqua conludere plumas. 

(U. 365-9) 
. . . bucula caelum 
suspiciens patulis captavit naribus auras. 

(U. 375-6) 
ne nocturna quidem carpentes pensa pueUae 
nescivere hiemem, testa cum ardente viderent 
scintillare oleum et putris concrescere fungos. 

(11. 390-2) 

. . . medio celeres revolant ex aequore mergi 
clamoremque ferunt ad litora, cumque marinae 
in sicco ludunt fulicae, notasque paludes 
deserit atque altam supra volat ardea nubem. 

(U. 361^) 

More lines might be quoted from both poems, but these are 
sufficient to show the fidelity with which Thomson followed 
Vergil. 



THOMSON AND THE DIDACTIC POETS 187 

It is significant that, according to the statement of G. C. 
Macaulay, as the indebtedness to Vergil increases, that 
to other poets decreases in the successive editions. The 
same critic is incUned to credit that increase to the influ- 
ence of Lyttelton.2 It is in Winter, too, that Vergil is 
placed emphatically first among the shades of the great 
poets. In the first edition he is hailed as 

Maro! the best of poets and of men, 

and in the second as 

Maro! the glory of the poet's art, 

while in the final form, the praise is softened somewhat but 
not lessened : 

Behold who yonder comes! in sober state. 
Fair, mild, and strong, as is a vernal sun: 
'Tis Phoebus' self, or else the Mantuan swain! 

Summer, which first appeared in 1727, has fewer Vergilian 
reminiscences than Winter. There is a slight echo of that 
favorite passage which he had already quoted in the Preface 
to the second edition of Winter, in the lines beginning, 

Thrice happy he! that on the sunless side 
Of a romantic mountain, forest-crowned. 
Beneath the whole collected shade reclines, 

and it is possible that the closing apostrophe to Philosophy 
was suggested by this same passage. In the 1727 and 1730 
texts, were some lines describing the starting of a forest 
fire, which were modeled upon Vergil, but these are omitted 
in the later editions. The long passage, however, contain- 
ing the praise of Britain and the enumeration of the great 
2 James Thomson. (English Men of Letters ) pp. 145-6. 



188 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

names in her history, obviously owes much to a similar 
passage in the second Georgic in praise of Italy.^ The 
likeness is rather in the general idea and purpose of the 
passage than in individual phrases or expressions. Both 
begin with a description of the fertility of the soil and the 
prosperity of the country, and then pass to an account of 
the cities with their active business life, and the harbors 
which give evidence of supremacy in commerce. Then 
follows an enumeration of the great names in the history of 
each country, although Thomson's list includes men of 
letters as well as statesmen and warriors. Each poet con- 
cludes with an address to his beloved land. As is char- 
acteristic of much of the English imitation of Latin, Thomson 
is more verbose than Vergil. The name of each hero is the 
touch of the rowel which spurs on the English Pegasus for 
several lines; whereas the Latin poet leaves the elaboration 
to his reader, adding to the proper name at most only a 
single epithet. The "weighty brevity" of the classic 
writers, which Landor so much admired, was difficult for 
the average Englishman to imitate. 

There are a number of passages in Spring where Thomson 
is following Vergil, among them the descriptions of the 
battle of the bulls with the heifer standing by, of the singing 
of the birds at the coming of Spring, and of the nightingale 
robbed of her young: 

Oft when returning with her loaded bill, 
The astonished mother finds a vacant nest, 
By the hard hand of unrelenting clowns 
Robbed, to the ground the vain provision falls; 
Her pinions ruffle, and low-drooping scarce 
Can bear the mourner to the poplar shade, 
Where all abandoned to despair she sings 
Her sorrows through the night; and on the bough 

» Georg. 2. 136-176. 



THOMSON AND THE DIDACTIC POETS 189 

Sole-sitting, still at every dying fall 
Takes up again her lamentable strain 
Of winding woe, tiU wide around the woods 
Sigh to her song, and with her wail resound. 

This is an elaboration of Vergil's lines, 

qualis populea maerens philomela sub umbra 
amissos queritur fetus, quos durus arator 
observans nido implumis detraxit; at ilia 
flet noctem, ramoque sedens miserabile carmen 
integrat, et maestis late loca questibus implet. 

{Georg. 4. 511-515) 

The description of the Golden Age is a treatment of a 
theme so universal in all literature that it is impossible to 
trace it to any one model. When Thomson writes, 

But now those white unblemished minutes, whence 
The fabling poets took their golden age, 
Are found no more amid these iron times, 

he may be thinking of Horace and his longing for the arva 
heata, of Isaiah and his picture of the reign of the Prince of 
Peace, or of any of their numerous imitators. But when 
we examine the lines which were in the early editions, but 
were not included in those of 1744 and 1746, it is clear 
that Vergil is his chief though not his only model. Thomson 
departs here from the Georgicsi, which contain merely a 
suggestion for the passage, and follows the fourth Eclogue, 
many of the lines being close imitations of the Latin: 

The knotted oak 
Shook from his boughs the long transparent streams 
Of honey, creeping through the matted grass. 
Th' uncultivated thorn a ruddy shower 
Of fruitage shed, on such as sat below. ... 



190 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

Nor had the spongy full-expanded fleece 
Yet drunk the Tyrian dye. The stately ram 
Shone through the mead, in native purple clad, 
Or milder saffron; and the dancing lamb 
The vivid crimson to the sun disclosed. 

These are the very words of Vergil translated into the past 
tense, with the usual elaboration : 

incultisque rubens pendebit sentibus uva, 
et durae quercus sudabunt roscida mella. . . . 
nee varios discet mentiri lana colores, 
ipse sed in pratis aries iam suave rubenti 
murice, iam croceo mutabit vellera luto; 
sponte sua sandy x pascentis vestiet agnos. 

(Ed. 4. 29-30, 42-45) 

It would be interesting to know what caused Thomson to 
discard Vergilian echoes here and add them in the later 
editions of Winter. 

Perhaps the answer is to be found in a passage in Autumn. 
Here he follows Vergil's description of the rise of the various 
arts as it is given in the first Georgic,* when the Roman 
poet, instead of lamenting the advent of agriculture and 
commerce as he had in the fourth Eclogue, regards all the 
difficulties placed in the way of man as blessings given by 
Jove which might enable mortals to climb upward in the 
scale of civilization: 

pater ipse colendi 
haud facilem esse viam voluit, primusque per artem 
movit agros curis acuens mortalia corda, 
nee torpere gravi passus sua regna vetemo. 

Both poets, on maturer thought, seem to have rejected the 
image of the idleness and luxury of the Golden Age, and to 

* Gearg. I. 118-159. 



THOMSON AND THE DIDACTIC POETS 191 

have sung the song of labor. Perhaps Thomson felt the 
stories of the Golden Age to be what he called them in the 
1728 edition, "gaudy fables," unsuitable for a "Genius fired 
with the charms of Truth and of Nature." In this account 
of the progress of civilization, he is in accord too with the 
theories of modern scientists and of that strangely modern 
ancient, Lucretius. 

Vergil's description of a torrent of rain in the first Georgic ^ 
furnished the model for Thomson's harvest storm, as it did 
for Swift's City Shower. The simile in the second book of 
the Aeneid,^ in which Aeneas compares himself as he stands 
upon his housetop and watches the flames sweep nearer, 
to a shepherd gazing from a rock at the onrush of a mountain- 
torrent flooding the fields, was the basis of the following 
lines: 

Fled to some eminence, the husbandman 
Helpless beholds the miserable wreck 
Driving along; his drowning ox at once 
Descending, with his labours scattered round 
He sees, 

of which the last lines are close to the Vergilian 
. . . sternit sata laeta boumque labores. 

I have already quoted the closing lines of Autumn, and 
shown their relation to a passage in the second Georgic. 
But the similarity begins many lines back of this. In the 
first place, in order to introduce the lines on Stowe in the 
1744 edition, a passage was incorporated which had been 
originally in the early editions of Winter, beginning. 

Oh! bear me then to vast embowering shades. 

About two hundred Unes later, Thomson begins his praise 
8 Georg. 1. 311-334. « Aen. 2. 304-308. 



192 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

of country life, which continues throughout the passage 
quoted above to the end of the poem. It begins, 

Oh knew he but his happiness, of men 
The happiest he! who far from pubhc rage 
Deep in the vale, with a choice few retir'd, 
Drinks the pure pleasure of the rural life. 

This again, like the Golden Age, is a favorite theme with 
many poets, but none has given it perhaps such full expres- 
sion as Vergil in the lines ^ which serve as a model for those 
of Thomson: 

fortunatos nimium, sua si bona norint, 
agricolas! quibus ipsa procul discordibus armis 
fundit humo facilem victiun iustissima tellus. 

It is not only the similarity in phraseology in these two 
passages, of which many examples might be quoted, but the 
general harmony of thought and feeling between them which 
marks the influence of Vergil upon Thomson. There are 
many other things which show the kinship of the two poets, 
as their common dehght in sounding names, the frequent 
allusions to Vergil in Thomson's letters and in his other 
poems, and the emotion which his reading of the Latin 
aroused in him. But nothing marks it so definitely as this 
passage, which reveals their common "devotion to the 
works of Nature," which Thomson recognized as the inspira- 
tion of the Georgics, and their common belief in a Deity who 

pervades 
Adjusts, sustains, and agitates the whole.* 

As is evident from the passages quoted above, Thomson 
shows in his relation to Vergil the sympathy of one great 
poet of nature for another, and manifests his influence 

^ Georg. 2. 458 fif. » Of. Georg. 4. 219-227 and Aen. 6. 724-7. 



THOMSON AND THE DIDACTIC POETS 193 

in single passages and general tone, rather than in the 
scheme or purpose of his work. Thomson's followers, 
however, seized upon the didactic element of his poem, 
and taking the hint partly from him and partly from Vergil 
himself, they developed that side of Thomson's work through 
all the extremes of tediousness and absurdity. James 
Grainger, the author of the Sugar Cane, "a West India 
Georgic" in four books, the favorite number, since it had 
been chosen by both Vergil and Thomson, calls the roll of 
the chief didactic poets: 

Spirit of Inspiration, that didst lead 
Th' Ascraean poet to the sacred mount, 
And taught 'st him all the precepts of the swain; 
Descend from Heaven, and guide my trembling steps 
To Fame's eternal dome, where Maro reigns; 
Where pastoral Dyer,' where Pomona's bard. 
And Smart ^° and Somervile " in varying strains, 
Their sylvan lore convey. 

To this list, however, we must add the names of John Arm- 
strong, who wrote on the Art of Preserving Health, and of 
William Thompson, whose subject was Sickness; of David 
Mallet, whose Fancy took flight over the whole world in 
his Excursion, and of Mark Akenside, the commemorator 
of the Pleasures of Imagination; of Thomas Tickell, who 
wrote a fragment of a poem on Hunting, of Robert Dodsley, 
the author of a poem called Agriculture, of Matthew Green, 
whose subject was the Spleen, of Soame Jenyns, who gave 
instructions in verse on the Art of Dancing, and finally of 
William Mason, in whose English Garden, one of the best 
of the descendants of the Seasons, didactic poetry, accord- 
ing to Warton, "is brought to perfection, by the happy com- 

' Dyer wrote The Fleece. 
'° Christopher Smart wrote The Hop-Garden. 
" Somerville's poem was The Chase. 



194 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

bination of judicious precepts, with the most elegant orna- 
ments of language and poetry." Nor must we forget Eras- 
mus Darwin's Botanic Garden, the second part of which, the 
Loves of the Plants, moved the editors of the Anti- Jacobin to 
unholy mirth and clever parody in the Loves of the Triangles. 
Many of these well-intentioned poets thought that they 
were supplying a deficiency in the works of Vergil. 
Somerville, for instance, remarks that the subject of the 
Chase might well have been treated in the third Georgic, 
but that Vergil devotes only ten verses to it, and confines 
his discussion of dogs to greyhounds and mastiffs. And 
by the time we have worked our way through these weari- 
some wastes, we are ready to apply Mason's query to the 
whole school, and to sympathize with him when he says, 

Yet, while I thus exult, my weak tongue feels 

Its ineffectual powers, and seeks in vain 

That force of ancient phrase which, speaking, paints. 

And is the thing it sings. Ah Virgil! why. 

By thee neglected,^^ was this loveliest theme 

Left to the grating voice of modern reed? 

Why not array it with the splendid robe 

Of thy rich diction, and consign the charge 

To Fame, thy hand-maid, whose immortal plume 

Had borne its praise beyond the bounds of Time? 

Cowper in The Task shows to some extent the influence 
of Thomson and his followers. He is continuing the com- 
bination of didactic and rural poetry which appears even 
in Wordsworth, although both poets are more concerned 
with drawing moral and religious lessons from Nature than 
with giving practical directions to the rustic. This is 
especially true of the author of the Prelude. In The Garden 
Cowper gives in true Vergilian fashion instructions for the 

>2 See Georg. 4. 147-8. 



THOMSON AND THE DIDACTIC POETS 195 

growth of "no sordid fare, a cucumber," for which the 
gardener must build a hotbed. 

First he bids spread 
Dry fern or litter'd hay, that may imbibe 
The ascending damps, then leisurely impose, 
And lightly, shaking it with agile hand 
From the full fork, the saturated straw. 

Another passage tells of the care necessary for flowers in a 
greenhouse : 

The soil must be renew'd, which, often wash'd, 
Loses its treasure of salubrious salts, 
And disappoints the roots: the slender roots 
Close interwoven where they meet the vase 
Must smooth be shorn away; the sapless branch 
Must fly before the knife; the wither'd leaf 
Must be detach'd, and, where it strews the floor, 
Swept with a woman's neatness, breeding else 
Contagion, and disseminating death. 

Lines like these have the true didactic sound, and may well 
have been written under the influence of either Vergil or 
Thomson. That the Georgics were not far from Cowper's 
mind as he wrote the Task is evident from the comparison 
drawn from the fourth Georgic to aid in describing the Rus- 
sian palace of ice: 

In such a palace Aristaeus found 
Cyrene, when he bore the plaintive tale 
Of his lost Bees to her maternal ear. 

And Vergil's famihar lines, 

O fortunatos nimium, sua si bona norint, 
agricolas! quibus ipsa procul discordibus armis 
fundit humo faeilem victum iustissima tellus, 

iOeorg. 2. 458-60) 



196 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

may have found an echo in Cowper's wish: 

O for a lodge in some vast wilderness, 
Some bomidless contiguity of shade, 
Where rumor of oppression and deceit, 
Of unsuccessful or successful war, 
Might never reach me more. 



CHAPTER IX 
LANDOR AND THE ROMANTICISTS 

TteE study of Latin has until recent years kept the noise- 
less tenor of its way, for the most part unshaken by the 
various changes in educational theory or literary practice. 
Throughout the centuries it has remained steadily the 
basis of culture in England, and until recently its value 
and necessity have not been questioned. But at certain 
times, notably in the first half of the sixteenth century and 
in the Romantic Period, there has been a sudden growth of 
an interest in Greek literature which for the time has thrown 
Latin into the background. But even then, although it 
has not led the spectacular life of its elder sister, it has 
quietly held its own, and, like Cinderella, done the daily 
chores that the more brilliant sister might go out into society. 
And there was always the possibility of a visit from the 
Fairy Godmother, by means of whose enchantments the 
beauty of the drudge might be shown to the world. 

Such a period of comparative neglect of Latin was ushered 
in with the Romantic Movement in England. About the 
middle of the eighteenth century, at the beginning of the 
revolt against rules and formalism and imitative poetry, 
the spontaneous graces of the Greeks won more admirers 
than the regular art of the Romans. Cowper's favorite 
poet was Homer and not Vergil, and Wilkie followed the 
Greek model in his Epigoniad, and attacked Vergil on 
the ground of plagiarism. In his Dream he says to Homer, 

Let Titynis himself produce his store, 
Take what is thine, but little will remain: 
Little I wot, and that indebted sore 
To Ascra's bard, and Arethusa's swain; 
And others too beside, who lent him many a strain. 

197 



198 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

This attack by Wilkie, however, is extreme. For the 
most part, writers merely ignored the Latin poet in favor 
of the Greek. Gray and his friend Mason, CoUins and Cow- 
per, Coleridge ^ with his training under the Reverend James 
Bowyer, all showed their preferences for the earlier litera- 
ture. The later Romanticists also preferred the Greek, 
and their interest in Hellenic Hterature and art was fostered 
by their intense enthusiasm for the brave struggle that the 
modern Greeks were making for liberty and independence. 
These facts explain the scarcity of references to Vergil or 
imitations of his poems in the work of men like Byron and 
Shelley.^ All these poets knew Vergil, but he did not find 
a prominent place in their poetry. 

Many years before the Lyrical Ballads appeared, the 
formal classical epic had gone out of fashion, and men had 
gradually ceased to care for the polished brilliancy of the 
mock-heroic. They were beginning to think with Field- 
ing that nothing could be more absurd than the invoca- 
tion of a muse by a modern. The time had gone by, 
too, for sober didactic poems, with elaborate digressions 
on the beauties of Nature expressed in stilted and laborious 
blank verse, even though the Seasons retained its popularity 
well into the middle of the century. The Loves of the Tri- 
angles was an effective reductio ad absurdum for the average 
examples of this type of versifying. There was of course 
no sudden or final revolt against the mock-epic of Pope or 
the didactic poem of Thomson. The Rape of the Lock was 

^ See his Biographia Ldieraria (Everyman's Library), p. 3. Coleridge 
once said, "If you take from Virgil his dictioil and meter, what do 
you leave him?" Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Cole- 
ridge, edited by H. N. C., p. 30. 

* See Prometheus Unbound, II. 2. 90 S., where there is a reference 
to Vergil's sixth Eclogue, and Hellas, 11. 1060 S., with an echo, ad- 
mitted by Shelley, of the Pollio. Also see Keats, Ode to Apollo, stanza 
3. Shelley translated part of the tenth Eclogue. 



LANDOR AND THE ROMANTICISTS 199 

still admired, and the Dunciad furnished Byron with a 
model for his English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. Rogers' 
didactic poem, The Pleasures of Memory, appeared in the last 
decade of the eighteenth century. But in general the 
movement of the Romanticists was away from the formal 
and the imitative. The new nature poets had no use 
for the artificial pastoral, and objected as much to 
the meaningless generalities of the diction of Pope and 
his contemporaries as to their transplanted nymphs and 
shepherds. Some of the earlier Romanticists endeavored 
to make Vergil argue on their side of the question, and 
plead for a true love of nature. Joseph Warton, for instance, 
in his Enthusiast, writes, 

And great Aeneas gazed with more delight 

On the rough mountains shagged with horrid shades, . . . 

Than if he enter'd the high Capitol 

On golden columns rear'd, a conquered world 

Exhausted, to enrich its stately head. 

More pleased he slept in poor Evander's cot. 

On shaggy skins, luU'd by sweet nightingales. 

Than if a Nero, in an age refined. 

Beneath a gorgeous canopy had plac'd 

His royal guest. 

But on the whole, the attitude was that of Crabbe, the 
realist, who rebelled against the classical pastoral in these 
words: 

On Mincio's bank, in Caesar's bounteous reign. 
If Tityrus found the Golden Age again. 
Must sleepy bards the flattering dream prolong, 
Mechanic echoes of the Mantuan song? 
From Truth and Nature shall we widely stray, 
Where Virgil, not where Fancy, leads the way? ' 

» The Village, published in 1783. 



200 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

In view of these facts, it is obvious that if we are to find 
Vergilian influence at this time when the individual was 
so important, it will be, not in any school, like the pastoral 
or the didactic poets, but in individual writers, whose 
inevitable early training in the classics has left with them 
a memory of Vergil which other interests cannot efface, 
and which is too precious to abandon. It will be in a Beattie, 
who writes, 

Fain would I sing (much yet unsung remains) 
What sweet delirium o'er his bosom stole. 
When the great shepherd of the Mantuan plains 
His deep majestic melody 'gan roll. 

It will be in a single poem like Laodamia, which Words- 
worth wrote after re-reading Vergil with his son. It will 
be in a Cowper, who, in spite of the fact that he liked the 
Homeric epics better than the Aeneid, was 

never weary of the pipe 
Of Tityrus, assembUng as he sang, 
The rustic throng beneath his fav'rite beech. 

And most of all it will be in a Landor, the greatest classicist 
of the period among the men of letters, as Swinburne called 
him, "a child of Rome." 

Landor's pleasure in the classics never flagged; he read 
and studied them throughout his life from his schooldays 
to the last years in Italy, when he found a relief from his 
troubles in teaching Latin to Miss Kate Field, his young 
American friend. The first direct evidence of his interest 
in Vergil is to be found in a translation of a portion of the 
fourth Georgic which he made in 1794. In spite of its 
high literary quality, he never published it, but the first 
twenty lines are printed in the biography by Forster,* who 

* Life and Works of Walter Savage Landor, vol. I, p. 24. 



LANDOR AND THE ROMANTICISTS 201 

found the translation among Landor's papers. And the 
constant references to Vergil in his letters, the frequent quo- 
tations from his writings, and the large amount of criticism 
of him contained in the Imaginary Conversations and in the 
critical essays on Theocritus and Catullus, are sure proofs 
of his knowledge of and interest in the greatest of the Latin 
poets. 

Landor was interested in the great writers of the past 
not merely as authors. He must call them all up before 
him, and make them talk again in an idiom as nearly their 
own as possible. But in his re-creation of the personality 
of Vergil, he has not proved himself equal to the subject, 
unless it is true that he was consciously representing Vergil's 
shyness by painting him in the most neutral colors. It 
would not be remarkable, however, if he had failed to attain 
to full sympathy with a man of Vergil's nature. A char- 
acter whose outstanding qualities were modesty and hatred 
of strife, could hardly be thoroughly understood by a man 
whose chief delight was in stirring up feuds with his neigh- 
bors and cultivating the feeling of being abused. In any 
case, we have in the dialogue between Virgilius and Horatius 
a colorless representation of the former, in whom there are 
no evidences of a genius great enough to write the Aeneid. 
Horace is far more strongly individualized, and it is through 
his words chiefly that we obtain whatever impression we 
get of his companion. Some facts we do glean from Vergil's 
words as to his indebtedness to antiquity and his unwilling- 
ness to disturb the religious faith of the people, but these seem 
rather forced references to his work, and throw little light 
on his personality. A slight feeling of contempt for the 
gentle, retiring disposition of the poet tinges the words 
which Landor puts into the mouth of Porson, with a strange 
forgetfulness of the third ode of the first book of Horace. 
"The ancients," he said, "used to give the sea the color 



202 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

they saw in it, . . . Virgil blue-green, as along the coast of 
Naples and Sorrento: I suspect, from his character, he 
never went a league off land. He kept usually, both in 
person and poetry, to the vada caerulea.'" To be absolutely 
fair, however, the reply of Southey must be added: "But 
he hoisted purple sails, and the mother of his Aeneas was 
at the helm." 

Vergil was by no means Landor's favorite poet, even 
among the Romans. Ovid, in his opinion, had the finest 
imagination of all the ancient Romans, and was more like 
Homer than Vergil was. Vergil was inferior to Euripides 
in poetical power, to Lucretius in vigor, to Catullus in ele- 
gance and grace. He concedes that all their powers to- 
gether could not have composed the Aeneid, a poem which 
shortly before he has called the "most mis-shapen of epics." 
In fact, almost every word of praise is accompanied by a 
qualifying "but." At the beginning of the Imaginary 
Conversations, Landor cautions the reader against credit- 
ing to him any of the opinions which he puts into the mouths 
of his characters. But when the same estimate is repeated 
over and over again in different dialogues, the reader begins 
to think that the personal feeling of the author had some- 
thing to do with its formulation. Therefore when we read 
that Messala considered the description of Winter in the 
third Georgia^ "unworthy of even a secondary poet," 
with "no selection of topics, no arrangement, no continuity," 
and that Petrarch said that "of all who have ever dealt with 
Winter, he is the most frost-bitten," and that in Porson's 
opinion, "incomparably better is Cowper's Winter than Vir- 
gil's, which is indeed a disgrace to the Georgics," and that 
this passage is one of those severely criticized by Home 
Tooke, the conclusion is inevitable that Landor himself 
thought that these lines were poor work. We may there- 
's LI. 349-383. 



LANDOR AND THE ROMANTICISTS 203 

fore fairly take the words which the speakers in his dialogues 
utter in regard to Vergil as indicative of Landor's own 
ideas. 

Certainly the general impression gained from the first 
reading of his criticisms of Vergil is that Landor was not 
very favorably disposed toward him. The destructive criti- 
cisms far outnumber the constructive. But upon closer 
examination of the facts, it becomes clear that this numerical 
superiority is not as significant as it might seem at first sight. 
For, as in the case of the remarks on the description of 
Winter, Landor is prone to dwell upon certain points. Thus 
he expresses his low opinion of the fourth Eclogue many 
times. It lacks harmony, says Messala; it is a mass of 
incoherent verses, says Calvus, another contemporary; and 
men of later periods speak of it as the dullest and poorest 
poem which Italy has produced, and as a sin for which 
the author needs to be forgiven. Similarly he records 
again and again his sense of the unfitness of the episode of 
Eurydice in the Georgics, and of the bathos, the affectation, 
the inflated language of which Vergil is guilty. In the 
second place, it is evident that these criticisms are almost 
entirely on small points. Such and such lines are bad, 
here is an instance of tautology, of hypallage, of unpleasant 
repetition of sounds, of anachronism. With an array of 
examples to prove their validity, which seems formidable un- 
til we realize that here again Landor is repeating, and 
making the same lines do double and even treble duty, 
statements like these are repeated with annoying insistence, 
till we are ready to cry out with Boccaccio, ''You really 
have almost put me out of conceit with Virgil." 

But here Landor would undoubtedly answer with Pe- 
trarch, "I have done a great wrong then both to him and 
you. Admiration," he continues, "is not the pursuivant to 
all the steps even of an admirable poet; but respect is 



204 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

stationary. Attend him when the ploughman is unyoking 
the sorrowful ox from his companion dead at the furrow; 
follow him up the arduous ascent where he springs beyond 
the strides of Lucretius; and close the procession of his 
glory with the coursers and cars of Elis." Indeed in more 
general terms, Landor is perfectly ready to praise the state- 
liness, the gravity (in the true Latin sense), the harmony, 
rhythm, and boundless variety of Vergil's versification, 
which "nothing in Latin excels." Although he believes 
that Vergil's pastorals are almost as inferior to those of 
Theocritus as Pope's are to his, yet he says, " Even in these 
there not only are melodious verses, but harmonious sen- 
tences, appropriate images, and tender thoughts. Once 
or twice we find beauties beyond any in Theocritus." Even 
the Georgics, which receive the lion's share of criticism, are 
"admirable" and contain passages better than any in 
Catullus, especially that touch of nature in the lines, 

it tristis arator 
maerentem abiungens fraterna morte iuvencum. 

{Georg. 3. 517-8) 

While Landor speaks frequently of the faults in con- 
struction which mar the Aeneid, he awards to it more praise 
than blame, and is evidently especially impressed by the 
power of the fourth book. The characters do not always 
please him. He compares the heroes of the Aeneid to the 
half -extinct frescoes of Raphael, but attributes the indis- 
tinctness, not to the ravages of time, but to the deficiency 
in the genius of the artist. "No man," he says (this time 
in his own person), "ever formed in his mind an idea 
of Dido, or perhaps ever wished to form it; particularly on 
finding her memory so extensive and her years so mature, 
that she could recollect the arrival of Teucer at Sidon." 
But later in the same conversation with Abb6 Delille, he 



LAND OR AND THE ROMANTICISTS 205 

says that the passion of Dido is always true to nature; 
and in the course of his criticism of Catullus, he gives expres- 
sion in the strongest terms to his admiration of this episode 
in the "mis-shapen epic," which shows that Landor was not 
always captious in his criticism, but could express most 
generously his appreciation of what he really believed was 
a fine passage. He was thoroughly honest in his opinions, 
without a doubt ; his error lies in lack of proportion. Neither 
in Catullus, Lucretius, nor Homer, he says, "is there any- 
thing so impassioned, and therefore so subhme as the last 
hours of Dido in the Aeneid. Admirably as two Greek 
poets have represented the tenderness, the anguish, the 
terrific wrath and vengeance of Medea, all the works they 
ever wrote contain not the poetry which Virgil has con- 
densed into about one hundred verses: omitting, as we 
must, those which drop like icicles from the rigid lips of 
Aeneas; and also the similes which, here as everywhere, 
sadly interfere with passion. In this place Virgil fought 
his battle of Actium, which left him poetical supremacy in 
the Roman world, whatever mutinies and conspiracies 
may have arisen against him in Germany or elsewhere. . . . 
Virgil is depreciated by the arrogance of self-sufficient poets, 
nurtured on coarse fare, and dizzy with home-brewed flattery. 
Others who have studied more attentively the ancient 
models, are abler to show his relative station, and readier to 
venerate his powers. Although we find him incapable of 
contriving, and more incapable of executing, so magnificent 
a work as the Iliad, yet there are places in his compared 
with which the grandest in that grand poem lose much of 
their elevation. Never was there such a whirlwind of pas- 
sions as Virgil raised on those African shores, amid those 
rising citadels and departing sails. When the vigorous 
verses of Lucretius are extolled, no true poet, no sane critic, 
will assent that the seven or eight examples of the best 



206 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

are equivalent to this one: even in force of expression, here 
he falls short of Virgil." 

But while Landor clearly knows the poetry of Vergil 
thoroughly, and is able both to appreciate its beauties and 
to pick out its faults, he wastes his critical energies upon 
such futile comparisons as that just quoted, and he misses 
entirely the deeper significance of the poems. He regards 
all three, Eclogues, Georgics, and Aeneid, as pieces of literary 
workmanship, and criticizes them as such. Inconsistencies 
and anachronisms in the Aeneid call for his disapproval, 
— in the Aeneid, a poem admittedly left incomplete, upon 
the perfecting of which Vergil intended to spend three more 
years, and which, according to the legend, he asked to have 
destroyed after his death. His approval is bestowed upon 
a single line, which he calls "the noblest verse in the Latin 
language," or upon the episode of Dido's death, or the words 
of Mezentius to his horse, or the description of a summer 
storm. But there is no word of the Eclogues as the first 
evidence of a new tradition in Latin poetry, or of the Aeneid 
as a great national poem. He does not seem to have had 
even the realization that Dante had of the universal signi- 
ficance of the great Roman epic. He is more like the mediae- 
val rhetoricians and grammarians, with their tendency to 
pick out individual passages for consideration. Unhke 
them, however, he feels no blind reverence for everything 
that Vergil wrote, but blames as well as praises, and is 
ready to give a reason for the faith that is in him. It 
is the Romantic method of individual appreciation in 
criticism. The reign of Aristotle and the "rules" is 
over. 

But in order to realize what that was that Landor missed, 
compare with this summary of his opinions, the following 
words of a critic of the last decade of the nineteenth cen- 
tury. In his Latin Literature, J. W. Mackail speaks of the 



LANDOR AND THE ROMANTICISTS 207 

Eclogues as follows: "Their true significance seems to have 
been at once realized as marking the beginning of a new era; 
and amid the storm of criticism, laudatory and adverse, 
which has raged around them for so many ages since, this 
cardinal fact has always remained prominent. Alike to the 
humanists or the earlier Renaissance, who found in them 
the sunrise of a golden age of poetry and the achievement 
of the Latin conquest over Greece, and to the more recent 
critics of this century, for whom they represented the echo 
of an already exhausted convention and the beginning of the 
decadence of Roman poetry, the Eclogues have been the real 
turning-point, not only between two periods of Latin Litera- 
ture, but between two worlds." ^ This ability to see the real 
significance of these poems is not joined with any blindness 
to their faults, for this passage is followed by one in which 
their weaknesses are pointed out with an unerring hand. 
Again, in comparing the following words, which sum up 
the fundamental qualities of the Aeneid, with Landor's 
estimate of the same poem, consider how much the latter 
has left unsaid. "The earlier national epics of Naevius 
and Ennius . . . had originated the idea of making Rome 
itself . . . the central interest, one might almost say the 
central figure, of the story. To adapt the Homeric methods 
to this new purpose, and at the same time to make his epic 
the vehicle for all his inward broodings over life and fate, 
for his subtle and delicate psychology, and for that philo- 
sophic passion in which all the other motives and springs 
of Ufe were becoming included, was a task incapable of 
perfect solution." ^ 

The direct influence of Vergil upon Landor is noticeable 
chiefly in Gebir. His style, both in poetry and prose, shows 
a marked Latin influence, but there is little possibiUty of 

6 P. 93. ' Pp. 96-97. 



208 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

tracing this directly to Vergil. Such participial construc- 
tions as occur in the lines, 

Lamented they their toil each night o'erthrown, 
or 

Him overcome, her serious voice bespake, 

are proofs of the effect upon him of long familiarity with 
Latin idiom, but not necessarily Vergilian idiom. 

But Gehir plainly shows Vergilian influence in the narra- 
tive itself. This poem is not classical in theme, but is, like 
Southey's narrative poems, an epic on a "romantic theme 
with classical or at least unromantic handling." But even 
the romantic theme is indebted in some degree to the Aeneid. 
The poem begins in the orthodox epic fashion, 

I sing the fates of Gebir. 

In the later Latin version, the first words are "Fata cano." 
The first thirty-four lines of the second book describe the 
building of the city, and instantly recall the description of 
the building of Carthage as Aeneas and Achates saw it 
from the hill which overhung the town.^ It is impos- 
sible to believe that Landor did not have in mind the lines 
of the Latin poet at the time he was writing these. The 
Gadites are hard at work preparing a place for their city: 

Some raise the painted pavement, some on wheels 
Draw slow its luminous length, some intersperse 
Salt water through the sordid heaps, and seize 
The flowers and figures starting fresh to view; 
Others rub hard large masses, and essay 
To polish into white what they misdeem 
The growing green of many trackless years. 

• Cf . Milton's description of the building of Pandemonium, Par. Lost, 
Book I. U. 670-730. 



LANDOR AND THE ROMANTICISTS 209 

Far off at intervals the axe resounds 

With regular strong stroke, and nearer home 

Dull falls the mallet with long labour fringed. 

Here arches are discover'd; there huge beams 

Resist the hatchet, but in fresher air 

Soon drop away : there spreads a marble squared 

And smoothen'd; some high pillar for its base 

Chose it, which now lies ruin'd in the dust. 

While the actual deeds performed are not identical, yet, 
in view of the spirit of the passage and the use of detaU in 
the description, Vergil's account of the building of Carthage 
unquestionably furnished a model for the lines quoted 
above : 

instant ardentes Tyrii : pars ducere muros 
molirique arcem et manibus subvolvere saxa, 
pars optare locum tecto et concludere sulco; 
iura magistratusque legunt sanctumque senatum. 
hie portus alii effodiunt; hie alta theatris 
fundamenta locant alii, immanisque columnas 
rupibus excidunt, scaenis decora alta futuris. 
quaUsapes- (^ en. 1. 423-430) 

and here follows the typical Vergilian simile which Landor 
does not make use of. 

The third book of Gehir is undoubtedly a reminiscence of 
the sixth book of the Aeneid. Gebir, conducted by Aroar, 
as Aeneas by the Sibyl, descends to the Underworld, where 
he sees the shades of his ancestors enduring punishment. 
As in Vergil, there is a description of the "happy fields." 
As Aeneas meets his father, so does Gebir, though the 
parent of the latter is not in Elysium. 

In the sixth book there are two passages in which Landor 
must have had Vergil in mind. The first is where the 
nymph promises to tell Tamar 



210 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

What makes, when Winter comes, the Sun to rest 
So soon on Ocean's bed his paler brow. 
And night to tarry so at Spring's return. 

These are almost the identical words of the bard lopas, 
who sang at the banquet which Dido gave in honor of her 
Trojan guest. He told 

quid tantum oceano properent se tingere soles 
hiberni, vel quae tardis mora noctibus obstet. 

{Aen. 1. 745-6) 

Again the description of Aetna is very much like that in 
the third book of the Aeneid. The two entire passages 
should be compared, but the following lines from each will 
serve for the purposes of illustration. 

And now Sicanian Aetna rose to view: 
Darkness with light more horrid she confounds. 
Baffles the breath and dims the hght of day. 

He heard the roar above him, heard the roar 

Beneath, and felt it too, as he beheld, 

Hurl, from Earth's base, rocks, mountains to the skies. 

These are Landor's lines. Vergil's are as follows: 
sed horrificis iuxta tonat Aetna minis. 



interdum scopulos avulsaque viscera montis 
erigit eructans, hquefactaque saxa sub auras 
cum gemitu glomerat fundoque exaestuat imo. 

intremere omnem 
murmiu'e Trinacriam. 

(Aen. 3. 571, 575-7, 581-2) 



LANDOR AND THE ROMANTICISTS 211 

Landor's Latin verse is quite Landorian. Anyone who 
reads the Latin version of Gehir, for instance, and an equal 
number of hues in the Aeneid, consecutively, will be struck 
at once with the difference in the rhythm of the hexameters. 
Needless to say, the Roman "wielder of the stateliest meas- 
ure" has the advantage in smoothness and polish. Yet 
here in the midst of un-Vergilian measures are many Ver- 
gilian phrases and cadences. It was almost inevitable 
for one who knew his Vergil well, and who wanted to speak 
in Latin hexameter verse of a wounded breast, to use the 
words sub pectore vulnus, for it is a favorite verse ending 
of Vergil's, occurring at least four times in the Aeneid. 
The familiar steteruntque comae is echoed by Landor, with the 
same shortening of the e, and fit strepitus, en age rumpe 
moras, and parce tuo generi are well-known Vergilian expres- 
sions. A careful study of the seven books of Gebirus has 
revealed over a dozen verse-tags, and nearly as many phrases 
at the beginning of lines, which recall Vergil, beside many 
other word-combinations in other places in the verse, and 
some echoes that cannot be identified exactly. The pro- 
portion is about the same in his other hexameter verse. 

Landor's wish that Vergil in particular might be followed 
by the younger poets, and the following words of Petrarch 
in the Pentameron, sum up Landor's practice and theory in 
regard to the poems of Vergil : " If younger men were present," 
said Petrarch, "I would admonish and exhort them to 
abate no more of their reverence for the Roman poet on 
the demonstration of his imperfections, than of their love 
for a parent or guardian who had walked with them far 
into the country, and had shown them its many beauties 
and blessings, on his lassitude or his debility. Never will 
such men receive too much homage. He who can best 
discover their blemishes, will best appreciate their merit, 
and most zealously guard their honor." 



CHAPTER X 
TENNYSON AND THE VICTORIANS 

Although Landor was really a Romanticist, he lived 
to see the great poets of the Victorian era. The continua- 
tion of the life of this enthusiastic lover of the classics, is 
in a sense typical of the continuity of the classical tradi- 
tion throughout the nineteenth century. For there was no 
decided break between the Romantic Period and the Vic- 
torian Period, although there was a certain growth toward 
a more complete and scholarly understanding and apprecia- 
tion of Greek and Latin. It was still a question of indi- 
vidual judgment, but it was the judgment of the individual 
trained in a scholarly method of historical criticism. Edu^ 
cation was no longer the privilege of a small circle, but 
was rapidly becoming the right of all men, and the reading 
public was growing apace. It is an indication of the wide- 
spread interest in the classics, that translations of the master- 
pieces of Greek and Latin literature were issued in cheap 
form, evidently intended to meet the needs and desires of 
those whose curiosity about them was great, but whose 
scholarship was not equal to reading them in the original. 

With the growing complexity of the life of the nineteenth 
century, however, and the multiplication of interests, es- 
pecially in view of the industrial changes that were taking 
place with such bewildering rapidity and all the altera- 
tions in the modes of life and thought that these involved, 
the classics were in a measure elbowed out of much of the 
literature of the period. Some writers, like Matthew Arnold, 
took refuge in the past, and tried to find in the classics or 

212 



TENNYSON AND THE VICTORIANS 213 

in the literature of the Middle Ages a protection from 
the assaults of modern materialism. Others dealt frankly 
with the new problems, and ignored the old subjects for 
poetry. Still others, as Shelley had done already, used 
the classics and stories derived from them for the purpose 
of discussing the modern questions in an indirect manner. 
But the knowledge of the classics runs like an undertone 
through almost all of the hterature of the time, expressed 
or unexpressed. The day of merely formal imitation for 
the form's sake is gone; the day of sympathetic and for 
the most part scholarly interpretation and use of the classics 
for all the various purposes which an author of the many- 
sided Victorian Period set before him, has come. 

The popularity of Greek continued, and the word classi- 
cism, used in connection with the latter half of the 
nineteenth century, immediately suggests the thought of 
Swinburne's Atalanta in Calydon, of Arnold's Merope, of 
Tennyson's Ulysses, and of Browning's Aristophanes^ Apology. 
Vergil no longer retained his place as the best of poets; 
his work was no longer the chief literary influence on the 
poetry of the time. And yet he was generally known and 
loved, loved greatly by many men, and perhaps more wisely 
than ever before. Poets and critics had ceased to assert 
that the Aeneid was greater than the Iliad and the Eclogues 
finer than the Idylls of Theocritus. At the same time 
they were beginning to apply a more historical method of 
criticism and to lay by the severe attacks upon Vergil's 
poetry for its artificiality. They were coming to see that 
comparisons of Vergil to Homer or Theocritus or Lucretius 
or Ovid were futile and worse than futile, for they blinded 
the critic to the fact that all these poets were distinguished 
for different qualities, each important in its way, and that 
there was no real or useful comparison to be made between 
them. Vergil was admired for what he was rather than 



214 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

criticized for what he might have been. They might con- 
tinue to prefer to read one writer rather than another, and 
in general the Victorians preferred the Greeks, but the 
days of hterary dictatorship, when one man or one group 
of men said, "This poet only shall be admired and imitated," 
were gone, it is to be hoped never to return. Vergil was 
now standing on his own feet, judged by his own merits, 
not according to "rules" nor yet according to the capricious 
hkes or dislikes of a Romantic opponent of "the artificial." 
After standing so long in the blaze of two fires, kindled by 
the zeal of the pseudo-classicists and of those who repre- 
sented the other extreme of hcense in poetry as a reaction 
against their dictates, he was at last free to bask in the 
warmth of a tolerant and sympathetic criticism, which took 
his work much as a matter of course, with never a thought 
of discarding him from the equipment necessary for a basis 
for the culture of every well-educated man. The classics 
still formed the main part of the school training of the 
majority of boys. 

A knowledge of his work was necessary above all for any 
man who intended to lead a public life in the nineteenth 
century. Latin quotations rolled from the tongues of 
Parliamentary orators with as much ease as English verses, 
and it was understood that their auditors comprehended 
what was said in that ancient tongue with equal facility. 
In the words of a modern critic speaking of Vergil,^ "No 
Englishman should be indifferent to a writer who has been 
quoted by illustrious Englishmen in every crisis of modern 
history, by Walpole and Pulteney, by Carteret and Chatham, 
by Fox and Pitt, by Gladstone and Lowe, by the most emi 
nent statesmen in 

1 Herbert Paul, Men and Letters: The Classical Poems of Tennyson, 
and The Decay of Classical Quotation. 



TENNYSON AND THE VICTORIANS 215 

the northern island, 
Sundered once from all the human race, 
Toto divisos orbe Brilannos." 

And in another essay he says, "In 1866 Mr. Gladstone and 
Mr. Lowe, both as good scholars as Peel, almost exhausted 
the second book of the Aeneid, and left the Trojan horse 
without a leg to stand on. Vergil was treated as if he had 
been a living writer of dispatches, instead of a poet whose 
language was no longer spoken, and who had been dead 
nearly nineteen hundred years." 

While any detailed consideration of Victorian prose is 
outside the scope of this book, it is significant of the 
widespread knowledge of Vergil that there is scarcely a 
prose writer of the period who does not quote him or allude 
to him at some time. Dickens, whose books, according to 
his biographer, contain not one allusion to the classics, is 
the exception among novelists, for George Eliot quotes 
Vergil, and Thackeray's stories are full of allusions and 
references and citations. Andrew Lang, whose name in 
connection with the classics will always be associated with 
Homer, says that he does not like much of Vergil's poetry .^ 
"Yet," he continues, "must Virgil always appear to us 
one of the most beautiful and moving figures in the whole 
of literature. How sweet must have been that personality 
which can still win our affections, across eighteen hundred 
years of change, and through the mists of commentaries, 
and school-books, and traditions!" He charges his poetry 
with the old romantic condemnation of "imitative." But 
he especially admires the Georgics, "when the poet is car- 
ried away into naturalness by the passion for his native land, 
by the longing for peace after cruel wars, by the joy of a 
country life." He translates the passage in the second 

'^ Letters on Literature; On Virgil. 



216 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

Georgia in which Vergil expresses his longing for a quiet con- 
templative life, free from public cares, and adds, "It is in 
passages of this temper that Virgil wins us most, when he 
speaks for himself and for his age, so distant, and so weary, 
and so modern; when his own thought, unborrowed and 
unforced, is wedded to the music of his own unsurpassable 
style." He says the Aeneid is "a beautiful empty world, 
where no real life stirs, a world that shines with a silver 
lustre not its own, but borrowed from 'the sun of Greece.'" 
The poet is himself only here and there, in the Dido episode, 
and in passages of reflection and description, "as in the 
beautiful sixth book." 

It did not need the phenomenal memory of Macaulay 
in those days to bear enough of Vergil's hexameters in mind 
to use them on occasion, although it must be admitted that 
probably few men would have undertaken, as Macaulay 
did, to amuse themselves as they walked home from the 
House of Commons at two o'clock in the morning, by trans- 
lating Vergil. Macaulay manifested his familiarity with 
the Aeneid also in his amusing Prophetic Account of a Grand 
National Epic Poem, to be entitled "The Wellingtoniad,'^ and 
to be published A.D. 282^, many of the incidents of which 
are burlesques of the narrative of Vergil's poem. 

These are two phases of the appeal of Vergil to individuals 
in the Victorian period, and Matthew Arnold represents still 
another. He sums up his own feeling toward him in his 
Essay on Joubert, in connection with a remark of Joubert's 
that coupled the names of Vergil and Racine. "And indeed 
there is something supreme in an elegance which exercises 
such a fascination as Virgil's does; which makes one return 
to his poems again and again, long after one thinks one 
has done with them; which makes them one of those books 
that, to use Joubert's words, 'lure the reader back to them, 
as the proverb says good wine lures back the wine-bibber.' 



TENNYSON AND THE VICTORIANS 217 

And the highest praise Joubert can at last find for Racine 
is this, that he is the Virgil of the ignorant." 

Arnold's prose gives ample evidence of his acquaintance 
with Vergil in reference and allusion, but the Latin poet 
has left little impress upon his poetry. Sohrab and Rustum 
is modeled on Homer rather than Vergil, and is to be com- 
pared with the Aeneid only in things like epic similes, which 
are common to both the classic poets. Except for the 
manuscript and translation of Vergil, William Morris gives 
no indication of Vergilian influence, all his classical material 
coming to him by way of the Greek, and the Rossettis are 
far from Vergilian. Swinburne's tastes are almost exclu- 
sively Greek. Clough's Vacation Pastoral has lines from the 
Eclogues for its mottoes, and the last verse of the tenth 
Bucolic of Vergil serves as the title of one of his poems, and 
similar conditions may be found in the work of many a 
Victorian poet. Thus the poetry of the period in general 
shows no marked Vergilian influence, although the knowl- 
edge of his work is implicit in nearly all of it. 

Robert Browning is a rather interesting exception. His 
wife's classical bent was almost entirely Greek. In her 
Vision of the Poets, she speaks thus of Vergil, the only ex- 
tended mention of him in her poems: 

And Virgil; shade of Mantuan beech 
Did help the shade of bay to reach 

And knit around his forehead high; 

For his gods wore less majesty 

Than his brown bees hummed deathlessly. 

The lawyers in the Ring and the Book quote Vergil fre- 
quently, and in two definite ways Browning shows Vergilian 
influence. His only direct use of the Latin poet is in his 
poem, Pan and Luna, which is an elaboration of three lines 



218 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

in the third Georgic,^ "sk bold rerendering of the myth that 
Vergil enshrines," as Stopford Brooke calls it. But more 
interesting than this is an anecdote told by Joaquin Miller, 
which illustrates the fact that for many nineteenth century 
critics, it was the meter and style of Vergil that seemed his 
chief call to fame. Not many would go as far as Coleridge 
and assert that there was nothing else of value in his verse, 
but many agree that the molding of a perfect meter and 
the use of a nearly faultless diction are his greatest achieve- 
ments. Joaquin Miller tells that he was invited by the 
Archbishop of Dublin to meet Browning and some other 
friends. ''Two of the Archbishop's beautiful daughters 
had been riding in the park with the Earl of Aberdeen. 
' And did you gallop? ' asked Browning of the younger beauty. 
'I galloped, Joyce galloped, we galloped all three.' Then 
we all laughed at the happy and hearty retort, and Browning, 
beating the time and clang of galloping horses' feet on the 
table with his fingers, repeated the exact measure in Latin 
from Virgil; and the Archbishop laughingly took it up, 
in Latin, where he left off. I then told Browning I had 
an order — it was my first — for a poem from the Oxford 
Magazine, and would hke to borrow the measure and spirit 
of his 'Good News' for a prairie fire on the plains, driving 
buffalo and all other life before it into a river. 'Why not 
borrow from Virgil as I did? He is as rich as one of your 
gold mines, while I am but a poor scribe.'" * And indeed 
the rhythm and movement of the Good News, allowing for 
the actual difference in the meter, is much like that of 
certain passages in Vergil. Perhaps the line that Browning 
quoted to illustrate his measure was the famous 

quadripedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum, 

» Georg. 3. 391-3. 

* The Complete Poetical Works of Joaquin Miller. San Francisco, 
1897, p. 59. This anecdote is told in a note on the poem, Kit Carsori's 
Ride, which is written in Browning's meter. 



TENNYSON AND THE VICTORIANS 219 

or that verse which describes Sabnoneus, 

demens qui nimbos et non imitabile fulmen 
aere et cornipedum pulsu simularet equorum. 

{Aen. 6. 590-1) 

In the nineteenth century there have been almost innumer- 
able translations of the works of Vergil, a clear indication 
of the universal knowledge of and interest in his poetry. 
They have been rendered chiefly into blank verse, although 
English hexameters and even the Spenserian stanza have 
been used. Of these, the work of R. and C. R. Kennedy, of 
John Conington, whose monumental edition of Vergil is the 
most scholarly yet produced in English, of C. P. Cranch in 
America, and of J. W. Mackail, deserves especial mention. 
The last of these, the work of a man who has written much 
and with profound sympathy on classical subjects, is par- 
ticularly satisfactory, especially his prose version. It is 
not so much the work of professed classical scholars 
that we are interested in, however, as that of men 
whose names loom large in English poetry. Words- 
worth translated a part of the Aeneid, and thereby incurred 
the criticism of Coleridge, and late in life he published a 
small portion of it. Cowper and Shelley also translated 
certain small sections of Vergil's work. Doubtless many 
a poet tried his schoolboy hand at a version of some lines 
of Vergil, as did some of our American men of letters. But 
the most ambitious attempt of the nineteenth century was 
the translation of the Aeneid into rhymed fourteeners by 
William Morris. 

Morris was primarily a student of the Middle Ages, and 
his treatment of classical subjects conformed to the mediae- 
val method. It is a question which can never be settled 
just how he would have handled the story of Aeneas if he 
had used it as a subject for original, independent treatment. 



220 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

His tendency would probably have been in the direction 
of Chaucer and the author of the Eneas; but as it was, he 
confined himself to the limits of a translation. 

His first approach to Vergil was made in an essentially 
mediaeval fashion. The stupendous task of making a manu- 
script of the Aeneid, as he had of the Icelandic sagas, Omar 
Khayyam, and Horace, was half completed in the years 
1874-1875. It was written out through the sixth book, 
with the exception of a few lines at the close. The work 
was done on vellum, and the pages were to be most elabor- 
ately decorated with borders and initials in gold and colors, 
and ornaments with figures in the text. Twelve half-page 
drawings were made by Burne-Jones, but the great floriated 
letters in gold and colors were Morris' own work. 

Although the manuscript was left incomplete, it had its 
fruit in an interest which imposed upon Morris a task fully 
as great as that of reproducing the original Latin. "As 
to my illumination work," he wrote to Mr. Murray in 
March, 1875, " it don't get on just now, not because I shouldn't 
like to be at it, but because I am doing something else with 
Virgil, to wit, doing him into English verse: I have got 
toward the end of the seventh book, and shall finish the 
whole thing and have it out by the beginning of June, I 
hope." He had begun the work in the preceding December, 
and made daily notes of his progress, recording for fourteen 
weeks the number of lines completed each day. He did not 
finish the translation as soon as he had hoped, however; it 
was not until November 4, 1875, that he could write in a 
letter to Mr. Murray, "The Virgil translation published 
to-day." But the completion of nearly ten thousand lines 
in about eleven months necessitated rapid work. Accord- 
ing to his record, the smallest number of lines that he trans- 
lated in one week was three hundred and fifteen, the largest, 
six hundred and thirty-five. 



TENNYSON AND THE VICTORIANS 221 

As was natural, the translation aroused much criticism, 
both favorable and adverse. It was the work of a man who 
was in no sense a classical scholar, and it approached Vergil 
from a side new to the Victorian Latinists. The translator 
was evidently a man who knew Vergil and loved the story 
he told, but loved it with the affection of a mediaeval writer 
of romance rather than that of a nineteenth century stu- 
dent. His attitude was definitely a romantic one, tinged 
with the ideas of the Middle Ages. J. W. Mackail, in his 
Life of William Morris, defends this attitude.^ On the 
other hand, Andrew Lang called both manner and method 
mistaken. Other critics have taken a more moderate 
stand, and half blamed, half praised. 

For myself, it is a great temptation to use the hackneyed 
but still expressive words, and say that it is a very pretty 
poem, but not Vergil. Nothing could be more literal than 
Morris' rendering of the Latin. The translation follows 
the original almost line for line. In fact, in all but two 
of the books, the number of verses in the Latin and in the 
English is the same, and in those two exceptions, the differ- 
ence is only one line. He even keeps the half-lines, a fact 
which shows with what scrupulous care he clung to the 
original. And yet, in spite of this fidelity, the spirit of the 
lines is changed. Any effort to transport bodily a great work 
of literature from antiquity to modern times, and then to 
deck it out in the garments which belong to still another 
tradition, is robing, as it were, the Venus de Milo in hoop- 
skirts or putting a mansard roof on the Parthenon. 

The mediaeval flavor is on almost every page of the trans- 
lation. The arguments of the books furnish good examples, 

' "He vindicated the claim of the romantic school to a joint owner- 
ship with the classicists in the poem which is not only the crowning 
achievement of classical Latin, but the fountain-head of romanticism 
in European literature." Vol. I. p. 322. 



222 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

especially that of the fourth: "Herein is told of the great 
love of Dido, Queen of Carthage, and the woeful ending of 
her." One is tempted to use the spelling of Dan Chaucer. 
And almost any passage, chosen at random, will furnish an 
illustration, as this from the second book, where Aeneas 
is endeavoring to persuade his father to fly with him from 
the doomed city: 

And didst thou hope, O father, then that thou being left behind, 
My foot would fare? Woe worth the word that in thy mouth I 

find! 
But if the gods are loth one whit of such a town to save, 
And thou with constant mind wilt cast in dying Troy-town's 

grave 
Both thee and thine, wide is the door to wend adown such ways; 
For Pyrrhus, red with Priam's blood, is hard at hand, who slays 
The son before the father's face, the father slays upon 
The altar. Holy Mother, then, for this thou ledst me on 
Through fire and sword! — that I might see our house filled with 

the foe, 
My father old, Ascanius, Creusa lying low, 
All weltering in each other's blood, and murdered wretchedly. 
Arms, fellows, arms! the last day's light on vanquished men doth 

cry. 
Ah! give me to the Greeks again, that I may play the play 
Another while: not unavenged shall all we die to-day.* 

The very proper names, such as "Palinure," sometimes take 

on a strange mediaeval spelling, and the use of quaint 

archaic words adds to the effect. Instances might be 

multiplied almost indefinitely, but a few will suffice, such 

as the translation of dux by "Duke," pono by "streak," 

draco by "worm," bello clari by "mighty under shield," 

senectus by "Eld," sterno by "spill," and infesta pinus 

by "fir of fight." 

• Aen. 2. 657-670. 



TENNYSON AND THE VICTORIANS 223 

The meter, the old rhymed "fourteener," the suggestion 
for which Morris may have taken from Chapman or Phaer, 
approaches the stateliness of the original, but is very monot- 
onous. It lacks the variety of the Vergilian hexameters, 
and frequently misses entirely metrical effects which com- 
mand admiration in the Latin. 

The exigencies of the rhyme, added to the closeness of 
the translation, are probably responsible for many of the 
awkward inversions, clumsy expressions, bad rhythms, and 
incoherent lines, as well as for the constant use of "do" 
as an auxiliary verb, and of prepositional phrases instead 
of the possessive pronoun, such as ''hand of him." Many 
of these rough places might have been smoothed had Morris 
taken more time for the polishing of his translation. The 
rapidity with which he turned out his lines allowed such 
verses as the following to pass unchallenged by his own 
critical judgment : 

Aeneas caught upon the pass the door-ward's slumber gave, 
or 

O'ertopped by Ida, unto those Troy's outcasts happy sign, 

or the really wretched opening lines of the ninth book. 
Nor did it give time to eUminate awkward repetitions, which 
have no model in the original, such as "how great doth great 
Orion sweep," or "Venus sore at heart for her sore- wounded 
son." The obscurity of some of his verses is equal to that 
in Browning's Agamemnon, of which one critic said that he 
needed the Greek in order to understand the English. Of 
actual errors there are very few; in a few instances Morris 
has added something in translation which gives a tone 
different from that of the original, but such alterations 
are rare. 

While the translation on the whole is a poor translation, 
it does not lack good qualities. Its fidehty to the Latin 



224 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

is a great merit, and there are passages which for dignity 
and simplicity may be favorably compared with the Latin. 
The passion in Dido's prayer for vengeance rises nearly to 
the elevation of Vergil's powerful lines, and the spirit of 
Aeneas' words is admirably caught in the simile. 

As when before the furious South the driven flame doth fall 
Among the corn : or like as when the hill-flood rolls in haste 
To waste the fields and acres glad, the oxen's toil to waste, 
Tearing the headlong woods along, while high upon a stone 
The unready shepherd stands amazed, and hears the sound come 
on.' 

But among all the poets of this period, there was only 
one who caught the real spirit of Vergil and enshrined it in 
his verse. The others touched him here and there, admired 
and borrowed his rhythm or a quotable line or two. But 
Tennyson comprehended all the phases of his genius and 
remains today the best interpreter of Vergil among the 
English men of letters. Andrew Lang, writing about 
Vergil in his Letters on Literature, which have already been 
quoted, said, "There will come no other Virgil, unless his 
soul, in accordance with his own philosophy, is among us 
to-day, crowned with years and honours, the singer of 
' Ulysses,' of the ' Lotos Eaters,' of ' Tithonus,' and ' Oenone.' " 

Much has been said and written about the resemblances 
between Tennyson and Vergil, and about the indebtedness 
of the English poet to his Roman predecessor. "Some one 
once called me the English Virgil," said Tennyson himself 
with evident pleasure. Indeed more than one has done 
so. In 1875, in an article in Macmillan's Magazine, the 
Reverend R. D. B. Rawnsley, signing himself "A Lincoln- 
shire Rector," emphasized by means of copious quotations 
the similarities between the two in their faculty of observing 
natural phenomena, their love of the sea, their joy in the 

' Am. 2. 304-308. 



TENNYSON AND THE VICTORIANS 225 

pomp and circumstance of war, their tenderness, their 
melancholy, their philosophy, and their style. In 1891 
was published a book called Illustrations of Tennyson,^ 
by Churton Collins, the threefold purpose of which, according 
to the Preface, was to trace in Tennyson's poems the imi- 
tations of and transferences from other authors, to illus- 
trate his poems, and to point out the connection between 
ancient and modern literature. Of this book, the entire 
first chapter is devoted to a comparison between the style 
of Vergil and that of Tennyson. After a detailed discus- 
sion of the similarities between them, with many examples 
to prove his point, the author sums up his remarks with 
the following vigorous statement: "In a word, the diction 
of Tennyson is, in its essential characteristics, as nearly the 
exact counterpart to that of Virgil as it is possible for verbal 
expression in one language to be the counterpart of that in 
another." Ten years later, in an unsigned article in the 
Quarterly Review for January, 1901, an elaborate parallel 
is drawn between the lives of the two men, after the manner 
of Plutarch. And not only does the writer set forth the 
resemblances in the events in their lives, as far as we are 
able to compare them in view of our scanty knowledge about 
Vergil, but he carries out the comparison to include the 
similarities in their character, their method of work, their 
personal appearance, their attitude toward critics and the 
attitude of critics toward them, their conceptions of their 
epic heroes, their philosophy, their knowledge of nature, 
their patriotism, their scholarship, and their language. 

These comparisons are interesting chiefly because they 
show why the work and personality of Vergil so strongly 
attracted Tennyson. But all these reasons, all the points of 
sympathetic contact, which have here been elaborated with 

' Some of this material had already been published in the Cornhill 
Magazine. 



226 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

such pains, are to be found in the clearest and simplest of 
forms in the poem To Virgil, which Tennyson wrote at the 
request of the Mantuans for the nineteenth centenary of 
the Roman poet's death. 

Roman Virgil, thou that singest Ilion's lofty temples robed in fire, 
Ilion falling, Rome arising, wars, and filial faith, and Dido's pyre; 

Landscape-lover, lord of language, more than he that sang the 

Works and Days, 
All the chosen coin of fancy flashing out from many a golden phrase; 

Thou that singest wheat and woodland, tilth and vineyard, hive 

and horse and herd; 
All the charm of all the Muses often flowering in a lonely word; 

Poet of the happy Tityrus piping underneath his beechen bowers; 
Poet of the poet-satyr whom the laughing shepherd bound with 
flowers; 

Chanter of the PoUio, glorying in the blissful years again to be, 
Summers of the snakeless meadow, unlaborious earth and oarless 

sea; 

Thou that seest Universal Nature moved by Universal Mind; 
Thou majestic in thy sadness at the doubtful doom of human kind; 

Light among the vanished ages; star that gildest yet this phantom 

shore; 
Golden branch amid the shadows, kings and realms that pass to 

rise no more; 

Now thy Forum roars no longer, fallen every purple Caesar's 

dome — 
Tho' thine ocean-roll of rhythm sound forever of Imperial Rome — 

Now the Rome of slaves hath perish'd, and the Rome of freemen 

holds her place, 
I, from out the Northern Island, sunder'd once from all the human 

race, 

I salute thee, Mantovano, I that loved thee since my day began, 
Wielder of the stateliest measure ever moulded by the lips of man. 



TENNYSON AND THE VICTORIANS 227 

Many have called this one of the most perfect of Tenny- 
son's poems. Certainly there is no other appreciation of 
the work and genius of Vergil which is more satisfying to 
a lover of the Mantuan poet, or gives him more delight. 
Not only does it show at its highest that rare sympathy 
of Tennyson's with the "vanished ages," but it proves his 
ability to pick out those qualities, those gifts, those pur- 
poses in the Roman which are really significant. Contrast 
this method of criticism with that of Landor, and see what 
a different Vergil we have. There is the poet who reached 
the lowest depths of poor versification in his description of 
Winter; here is he who is "lord of language," with 

All the chosen coin of fancy flashing out in many a golden phrase. 

There is the author of the "most mis-shapen of epics;" 
here is he whose "ocean-roll of rhythm sounds forever of 
Imperial Rome." Granting that Vergil did not have 
time to perfect his Aeneid as he would have wished, the 
question is, where the emphasis should be placed. Is it 
fairer to Vergil to remember him as a writer guilty of in- 
congruities, bathos, incoherence, and puerilities, or as the 

Light among the vanished ages; star that gildest yet this phantom 

shore; 
Golden branch amid the shadows, kings and reahns that pass to 

rise no more? 

Surely Vergil finds his true interpreter in Tennyson rather 
than in Landor; Tennyson loved him since his day began. 
He loved him and knew him. The ode is almost a transla- 
tion, not of the poems of Vergil, but of that personality 
which was the aspect of the Roman poet which most power- 
fully attracted Andrew Lang. As Frederick W. H. Myers 
has said, "Apart from the specific allusions, almost every 
phrase recalls some intimate magic, some incommunicable 



228 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

fire." ^ The praise is not merely verbal and perfunctory; 
it rests on a firm foundation of thorough knowledge. When 
Tennyson was asked what he meant by the "lonely word," 
he gave as an example the well-known cundantem rarmim, 
which has been so frequently assailed by critics of Vergil. 
But Tennyson was right, for it is actually one of the most 
remarkably significant phrases in the whole Aeneid, in its 
suggestion of Aeneas' eager haste. 

But perhaps even more than the "landscape-lover," 
or the "chanter of the Polho," or even the "light among 
the vanished ages," Vergil was to Tennyson the 

Wielder of the stateliest measure ever moulded by the lips of man. 

This very Ode is Tennyson's most successful attempt to 
approach the "ocean-roll of rhythm" of the Latin. His 
friends bear witness to the delight he took in reading or 
reciting favorite hexameters. "He was perpetually quoting 
Homer and Vergil," wrote Henry Graham Dakyns,^" "and 
to my mind there was nothing for grandeur of sound like 
his pronunciation of Latin and Greek as he recited whole 
passages or single lines in illustration of some point, of 
metre, perhaps, or thought, or feeling. . . . Then how he 
rolled out his Vergil, giving first the thunder, then the wash 
of the sea in the lines : 

fluctus uti medio coepit cum albescere ponto, 
longius ex altoque sinum trahit, utque volutus 
ad terras immane sonat per saxa neque ipso 
monte minor procumbit, at ima exaestuat unda 
verticibus nigramque alte subiectat harenam." 

{Georg. 3. 237-41) 

' Quoted in Alfred Lord Tennyson. A Memoir, by his Son. Vol. II, 
pp. 481-4. 

'° Tennyson, Clough, and the Classics, in Tennyson and his Friends. 



TENNYSON AND THE VICTORIANS 229 

And his son adds as other favorite hnes of his father's, 
those sounding ones in the sixth book of the Aeneid, 

demens qui nimbos et non imitabile fulmen 
aere et cornipedum pulsu simularet equorum, 

(Aen. 6. 590-1) 



and 



Romanos rerum dominos gentemque togatam. 

(Am. 1. 282) 



In The Daisy Tennyson himself tells how 

we past 
From Como, when the light was gray, 
And in my head for half the day, 

The rich Virgihan rustic measure 
Of Lari Maxume, all the way, 
Like ballad-burthen music kept." 

Tennyson frequently compared the movement of Milton's 
poetry with that of Vergil's. "Milton had evidently studied 
Virgil's verse," he said once to Warren, President of Mag- 
dalen, Oxford ; and again in connection with a similar remark, 
"If Virgil is to be translated, it ought to be in this elaborate 
kind of blank verse." It is an interesting commentary 
on Tennyson's attitude toward the classics that he made 
only one attempt at translation, a short passage from the 
Iliad. Vergil he did not try to render into English, or at 
least left no evidence of ever having done so. The condi- 
tional clause in the remark quoted above shows that he 
believed that the poems were better left undisturbed in their 
original tongue. 

It is interesting too that while he admired so greatly the 
Latin hexameters, he considered that hexameters in English 

" Cf. Georg. 2. 159 ff. 



230 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

were a "barbarous experiment." He would probably have 
agreed with Landor, who said, "English and German hexam- 
eters sound as a heavy cart sounds, bouncing over boul- 
ders." Tennyson was interested in making experiments in 
various other Latin meters, the Alcaic, the hendecasyllabic, 
and even the diflBcult and remarkable galliambic. This 
shows how sensitive he was to sound and rhythm, and 
explains why the sonorous majesty of the Vergilian meter 
appealed to him so strongly. But for his own dignified 
and serious epic poems, he preferred the English blank verse, 
which he wielded in stately fashion; yet he never equalled 
the ocean-roll of the Roman master of rhythm, except in 
the long lines of the Ode. 

Of the echoes of Vergilian hues and phrases which are 
numerous in Tennyson's poetry, and of the allusions to the 
Aeneid, the Georgics, and the Eclogues, I wish to say very 
little. Many of the parallels were pointed out by Tennyson 
himself in the notes which he left with his son, who also 
added others. Some of them were intentional paraphrases 
and translations, such as 

This way and that dividing the swift mind; 

some merely accidental parallels or unconscious echoes of 
hnes which had become almost Tennyson's own through 
long familiarity with them. Careful and complete work 
along this Hne has been done by Churton Collins in his 
Illustrations of Tennyson, published in 1891, and by W. P. 
Mustard in his Classical Echoes in Tennyson, 1904, and to 
them I refer anyone who is eager to investigate these rem- 
iniscences further. The value of such collections is to em- 
phasize what we are already aware of, Tennyson's love for 
the classics and his enormous learning. There are one or 
two passages, however, striking enough to warrant mention 
here. In the Idylls of the King, there are a number of 



TENNYSON AND THE VICTORIANS 231 

reminiscences of the Dido episode. Compare, for example, 
the hnes in Geraint and Enid, which tell how she 

ever failed to draw 
The quiet night into her blood, 

with those which describe the distress of the Carthaginian 
queen : 

neque umquam 
solvitur in somnos oculisve aut pectore noctem 
accipit. 

{Aen. 4. 529-531) 

Less close is the parallel in the following : 

Death like a friend's voice from a distant field 
Approaching through the darkness, call'd ; the owls 
Wailing, had power upon her, and she mixt 
Her fancies with the sallow-rifted glooms 
Of evening, and the moanings of the wind, 

where there are clear echoes of the Vergilian lines, 

hinc exaudiri voces et verba vocantis 
visa viri nox cum terras obscura teneret; 
solaque culminibus ferali carmine bulbo 
saepe queri, et longas in fietum ducere voces. 

{Aen. 4. 460-3) 

Most interesting of all is the poem Will, the spirit of which 
is precisely that of Vergil's 

quidquid erit, superanda omnis fortuna ferendo est, 

(Aen. 5. 710) 

and of his reported saying, which rests on the authority of 
Donatus, "that no virtue is more useful to a man than 
patience, and that there is no lot so hard that a brave man 



232 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

cannot conquer it by bearing it wisely." Hence Tennyson's 
strong-willed man, 

Who seems a promontory of rock 

That, compressed round by turbulent sound, 

In middle ocean meets the surging shock 

Tempest-buffeted, 

is fitly described with the help of a simile which comes 
straight from Vergil, 

ille velut rupes vastum quae prodit in aequor, 
obvia ventorum fm-iis expostaque ponto, 
vim cunctam atque minas perfert caeUque marisque 
ipsa immota manens, 

(Aen. 10. 693-6) 

On the whole the investigation of the classical reminis- 
cences in Tennyson has led to the conclusion that he is more 
indebted to Vergil than to anyone else, with the possible 
exception of Homer and Horace. But many of the "faint 
Homeric echoes, nothing worth," are due to the require- 
ments of the subjects of his poems, such as Oenone and the 
Lotos Eaters, and many of the Horatian phrases had become 
commonplaces. The nature of the Vergilian echoes more 
than any others would indicate that Tennyson had absorbed 
and assimilated the Vergilian material, that he had lived with 
Vergil rather than studied him. 

So it is quite fitting that the consideration of the influ- 
ence of Vergil should close with Tennyson, who is the last 
of the great poets of England to show in a decided form the 
effect of his Vergilian reading, and is the poet who, more than 
any other, can be called Vergilian. It is not only the echoes 
and reminiscences of the poems of Vergil in his work that 
make him important in the history of the influence of the 



TENNYSON AND THE VICTORIANS 233 

Roman poet upon the English writers. It is the instinc- 
tive sympathy between them, the innate resemblance that 
made so many men agree in calling him the English Vergil. 
Many another poet has been more imitative of Vergil than 
he, many another has quoted him more frequently. But 
no one has penetrated so deeply into the Vergilian spirit, 
and no one has expressed it so fully as Tennyson in his 
poem To Virgil. The Roman poet takes in the poetry of 
Tennyson somewhat the same place that the Bible has 
taken in the literature of England for so many centuries. 
One scarcely thinks of separating the quotations in either 
case from their context and calling attention to them by 
inverted commas. 

And Tennyson will probably be the last poet to show 
marked Vergilian influence, painful as the admission is to a 
lover of the classics. But rare is the man in these days, 
unless he is a student or teacher of the classics, who sits 
down each night, as Dr. Johnson did, and reads through a 
book of Vergil, and hardly less rare the writer who carries 
in his memory more than a few of the most familiar Vergilian 
lines. There are still some echoes in our modern prose and 
poetry of famous phrases, like lacrimae rerum, varium et 
mutabile semper femina, or arma virumque, and there will 
continue to be as long as Vergil is read in school and college. 
But although a recent volume of poetry bears the title, 
Per Arnica Silentia Lunae,^"^ how many will recognize its 
origin? We shall miss much of our inheritance if the influ- 
ence of the classics is taken from our future poetry. We 
shall miss more if we lose the ability to feel the presence 
of the great minds and spirits of antiquity in the literature 
that England has already produced. If Vergil becomes 
merely a name to the reader of English poetry, much of the 

" William Butler Yeats, Per Arnica Silentia Lunae. N. Y., 1918. 



234 VERGIL AND THE ENGLISH POETS 

work of Spenser, Milton and Tennyson will lose its meaning, 
if not its beauty. He will have to forego part of the poten- 
tial enjoyment of poetry who cannot say as he reads it, 

I salute thee, Mantovano, I that loved thee since my day began, 
Wielder of the stateUest measure ever moulded by the lips of man. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

I. This Bibliography contains only such books as deal with 
the relations of Vergil to a certain English writer or group of writers. 
Other books of reference have been mentioned, with bibhographi- 
cal information, in the notes. It would be impracticable to in- 
clude in the Bibliography the titles of all the chief books used in 
connection with the foregoing discussion. Such a Ust would be 
merely an enumeration of the works of the chief English poets and 
prose writers. The text of Vergil used is that edited by F. A. 
Hirtzel, in the Scriptorum Classicorum Bihliotheca Oxoniensis. 

Baynes, Thomas Spencer: What Shakespeare Learnt at School, 
in Shakespeare Studies, London & New York, 1894. 

Collins, Churton: Illustrations of Tennyson, London, 1891. 
Studies in Shakespeare, Westminster, 1904. I. Shake- 
speare as a Classical Scholar. 

CoMPARETTi, Domenico: Vergil in the Middle Ages, translated 
by E. F. M. Benecke, London, 1895. 

Klaeber, Fr.: Aeneis und Beowulf, in Archiv fur das Studium 
der Neueren Sprachen und Literaturen, 1911, Band 126. 

Leland, Charles Godfrey: The UnpubUshed Legends of Virgil, 
London, 1899. 

Long, Omera Floyd: The Attitude of Alcuin toward Vergil, in 
Studies in Honor of B. L. Gildersleeve, Johns Hopkins Press, 
1902. 

Mustard, W. P. : Classical Echoes in Tennyson, New York, 1904. 

(Rawnsley, Rev. R. D. B.) : Tennj'-son and Virgil, by a Lincoln- 
shire Rector, Macmillan's Magazine, 1875. 

Stapfer, Paul: Shakespeare and Classical Antiquity. Trans- 
lated from the French by Emily J. Carey, London, 1880. 
Chapter IV. Shakespeare's Classical Knowledge. 

Tunison, J. S.: Master Virgil, the Author of the Aeneid as he 
Seemed in the Middle Ages, Cincinnati, 1888. 

Zappert, Georg: Virgils Fortleben im Mittelalter, Vienna, 1851. 

235 



236 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

II. The following is a list of translations, burlesques, parodies, 
and imitations of the works of Vergil. Those marked * are Ameri- 
can translations; those marked ** have been discussed in the 
text. 

TRANSLATIONS 

Gavin Douglas: The xiii Bukes of Eneados of the Famose Poete 

Virgin. 1553.** 
Henry, Earl of Surrey: Certain bokes (II & IV) of Virgiles 

Aenaeis. 1557.** 
T. Ph AER : The seven first bookes of the Eneidos of Virgill. 1558.** 

The nyne first Bookes of the Eneidos ... with so much of 
the tenthe Booke, as since his death could be found. 
1562. 

The whole xii Bookes of the Aeneidos of Virgill ... by T. 
Phaer ... and ... T. Twyne. 1573. 

(Other editions, 1583, 1584, 1596, 1600, 1607, 1620.) 
Richard Stanyhurst : The first Foure Bookes of Virgil his Aeneis, 

translated into Enghsh Heroical Verse. 1582, 1583.** 
William Webbe: The first and second Eclogues, (in his Dis- 
course on English Poetrie). 1586. 
A. F. (Fraunce or Fleming) : TheBucoUks of P. V. M. . . . together 

with his Georgiks. 1589. 

The Lamentation of Corydon for the loss of Alexis. 1591. 
J. Brinsley: Virgils Eclogues, with his Booke De Apibus. 1620. 
S. T. Wrothe: The Destruction of Troy, or the Acts of Aeneas, 

translated out of the second booke of the Aeneads of Virgill. 

1620. 
W. L. (Lisle): Virgils Eclogues. 1628. 
T. May: Virgils Georgicks. 1628. 
J. Vicars: The XII Aeneids of Virgil. 1632. 
G.Sandys: The first booke of Virgils Aeneis. 1632. 
Sir John Denham: The Destruction of Troy. 1636. (Published 

1656.) 

The Passion of Dido for Aeneas. (?)** 
John Ogilby: The Works of P. V. M. 1649. His "second 

English Virgil," 1654.** 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 237 

E. Waller: Part of the Fourth Book of Virgil. 1657. Later 
completed by Sidney Godolphin, and published 1679. 

J. Harrington: Virgils Aeneis, the third, fourth, fifth, and sixth 
books. 1659. 

Sir R. Howard: The Fourth Book of Virgill. 1660. 

J. Boys: Aeneas his Errours (Book HI). 1661. 

Aeneas his Descent into Hell (Book VI). 1661. 

Sir R. Fanshaw: The Fourth Book of Virgill's Aeneis. 1664. 

Dryden's Miscellany Poems: 1684-1709. 

1684 Part I. Part of Virgil's Fourth Georgick ... by the 

Earl of Mulgrave. 

The Praises of Italy out of Virgil's second Georgic. By 
Mr. Chetwood. 

The Entire Episode of Nisus and Euryalus. Trans- 
lated from the Fifth and Ninth Books of Virgil's 
Aeneids, by Mr. Dryden. 

Virgil's Eclogues, Translated by Several Hands. (Eel. 1, 
John Caryll; 2, Mr. Tate and Mr. Creech; 3, Mr, 
Creech; 4, Mr. Dryden; 5, Mr. Duke; 6, the Earl 
of Roscommon; 7, Mr. Adams; 8, Mr. Stafford and 
Mr. Chetwood; 9, Mr. Dryden; 10, Mr. Stafford. 
Also translated or rather imitated in the Year 1666. 
By Sir WilUam Temple.) 

1685 Part II. The Entire Episode of Mezentius and Lausus 
... By Mr. Dryden. 

The Speech of Venus to Vulcan. By Mr. Dryden. 
Part of Virgil's Fourth Georgick. By Mr. Creech. 
The Episode of the Death of Camilla. ... By Mr. Staf- 
ford. 

1693 Part III. Aeneas his Meeting with Dido in the Elyzian 

Fields. ... By Mr. Wolseley. 
Amor omnibus idem . . . (Georg. 3. 209-285, by Dryden.) 
Part of Virgils First Georgick ... By Henry Sacheverell. 

1694 Part IV. A Translation of all of Virgil's Fourth 

Georgick, except the Story of Aristaeus, by Mr. 
Jo. Addison. 



238 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The Passion of Dido for Aeneas ... By S. Godolphin and 
E. Waller. (See above.) 

1704 Part V. Milton's Style imitated in a Translation of a 
Story out of the Third Aeneid. By Mr. Joseph 
Addison. 

1709 Part VI. The Love of Gallus ... By J. Trapp. 

The Description of the Prodigies which attended the 
Death of JuUus Caesar . . . By J. Trapp. 

Thomas Fletcher: Poems on Several Occasions and Transla- 
tions; wherein the First and Second Books of Virgil's Aeneids 

are attempted into Enghsh. 1692. 
John Lewkenor: Metellus's Three Dialogues . . .The Third is of 

Translations; with Virgil's Dido and Aeneas. 1694. 
John Dryden: The Works of Virgil: containing his Pastorals, 

Georgics, and Aeneis. Translated into EngUsh verse. 1697.** 
L. Milbourne: The First Book of Virgil's Georgics made English. 

1698. 
J. B.: The Young Lover's Guide. As also the Sixth Aenaeid, and 

Fourth Eclogue of Virgil. 1699. 
Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire: Part of the Story of 

Orpheus. (?) 
Sir Charles Sedley: The Fourth Book of Vir^l. (Georgics 4) (?) 
Chetwood: The Second Georgic. (?) (See above, Dryden'a 

Miscellany, Pt. I) 
Richard, Earl of Lauderdale: The Works of Virgil. 1708-9 (?), 

1700 (?) 
(?) The Golden Age. 1703. 
N.Brady: Virgil's Aeneis. 1716,1717. 
Wm. Hamilton: The Episode of Lausus and Mezentius. 1719. 

The Corycian Swain. (?) 
Mr. Sherbourne: The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid. 

1723. 
W. Benson: Virgil's Husbandry. (Georg. 1) 1725. 
J. Trapp: The Aeneis of Virgil. 1718-20. 

The Works of Vu-gil. 1731.** 
J. Theobald : The second Book of Virgil's Aeneid. 1736. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 239 

(?) An Introduction of the ancient Greek and Latin measures 
into British Poetry: attempted in ... a Translation of 
Virgil's first Eclogue (and) fourth Eclogue. 1737. 

A. Strahan: The First Aeneid. 1739. Another ed. with Trans- 

lation of the First Eclogue by F. Atterbury. 1767. 
J. H. : The second book of Virgil's Aeneis. 1740. 
J. Hamilton: Virgil's Pastorals. 1742. 

J. Mabtyn: The Georgicks of Virgil, with an EngUsh translation 
and notes. 1741. 

The Bucolicks of Virgil, with an EngUsh translation and 
notes. 1749. 
(?) The Georgics of Virgil. (Georg. 1) 1750. 
Christopher Pitt and Joseph Warton: The Works of Virgil in 

Latin and English . . . The Aeneid translated by C. Pitt. 

The Eclogues and Georgics, with notes on the whole, by J. 

Warton. 1753.** 
R. Andrews: The Works of Virgil Englished. 1766. 
T. Nevile: The Georgics of Virgil. 1767. 

B. Newburgh: A Translation of Some Parts of Virgil's Georgics. 

1769. 

Walter Harte : The Episode of Orpheus and Eurydice. (?) 

Edward BuRNABT Greene : The Ceir is of Virgil. 1780. 

W. Mills: The Georgics of Virgil. 1780. 

J, Tytler: The four first Eclogues. 1781. 

J. Morrison: The Second Book of Virgil's Aeneid. 1787. (2nd 
ed.) 

W. H. Melmoth: The Whole Genuine Works of Virgil. (Dry- 
den's translation, "revised and improved.") 1790 (?) 

James Beresford : The Aeneid. 1794. 

Hon. P. C. Smythe: The Episode of Aristaeus. 1795. 

C. Alexander: The Works of Virgil. 1796. 
W. Sotheby: The Georgics of Virgil. 1800. 
William Gowper : The Moretum. 1803. 
L.M.Sargent: The Culex of Virgil. 1807.* 
J. R. Dease: The Georgics. 1808. 

W. Stawell: The Georgics. 1808. 



240 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

C. Boyd: Virgil's Georgics, with the First, Fourth, Sixth and Tenth 

Eclogues. 1808. 
Davidson: The Works of Virgil translated into English prose. 

1810. 
J. Penn: The Fourth Eclogue. 1810. 
(?) The Sixth Book of the Aeneis of Virgil. 1814. 
William Cowper: The Aeneid, Book VIII, 11. 18 ff. 1815. 
F. Wrangham: Virgil's Bucohcs. 1815. 
William Wordsworth: Translation of a Part of the First Book 

of the Aeneid. 1816. 
C. Symmons: The Aeneis. 1817. 
Percy Bysshe Shelley: The Tenth Eclogue, vv. 1-26. (?) (Pub. 

1870.) 
J. Ring: A Translation of the Works of Virgil: partly original, 

and partly altered from Dryden and Pitt. 1820. 
R. Hoblyn: a Translation of the First Book of the Georgics. 

1825. 
A. W. Wallis: Select Passages from the Georgics of Virgil. 1833. 
I. Butt: The Georgics, translated into English Prose. 1834. 
J. Blundell: Hexametrical Experiments; or a version of four 

of Virgil's Pastorals. 1838. 
J. M. King: The Georgicks. 1843. 
J. Henry: The Aeneis, Books I and II. 1845. 
W. Sewell: The Georgics. 1846. 
J. M. King: The Aeneid of Virgil. 1847. 
W. H. Bathurst: The Georgics. 1849. 
R. and C. R. Kennedy: The Works of Virgil. 1849. 
E. Cobbold: The Georgics of Virgil. 1852. 
G.B.Wheeler: The Works of Virgil. 1852. 
W. Sewell: The Georgics of Virgil, hterally and rhythmically 

translated. 1854. 
R. C. Singleton: The Works of Virgil. 1855-59. 
C. R. Honey: A Translation into English Verse of Virgil's Fourth 

Georgic. 1859. 
R. D. Blackmore: The Farm and Fruit of Old; a Translation in 

verse of the First and Second Georgics of Virgil. By a Market- 
Gardener. 1862. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 241 

J. Miller: The Aeneid of Virgil. 1863. 

W. Grist: The Aeneid. Book I. 1864. 

J. B. Rose: The Georgics of Virgil. 1865. 

J. Conington: The Aeneid of Virgil, translated into English verse. 

1866.** 
J. B. Rose: The Eclogues and Georgics of Virgil. 1866. 
E. F. Taylor: The Aeneid of Virgil. Books I and XL 1867. 
C. S. Calverley: The Idylls of Theocritus and the Eclogues of 

Virgil. 1868. 
T. H. NoYEs: The Eclogues of Virgil. 1868. 
R. M. Millington: The BucoUcs or Eclogues of Virgil, trans- 
lated into heroic verse. 1870. 

A Translation of Virgil's Eclogues into Rhythmic Prose. 
1870. 

The Story of Aristaeus and his Bees. 1870. 

E. E. Middleton: The First Two Books of the Aeneid. 1870. 

(?) A prose Translation of Virgil's Eclogues and Georgics, by an 
Oxford Graduate. 1870. 

R. D. Blackmore: The Georgics of Virgil. 1871. 

J. M. King: The Georgics of Virgil in four Books. 1871. (Dif- 
ferent from the 1843 translation.) 

J. Lonsdale and S. Lee: The Works of Virgil. 1871. (Globe 
ed.) 

G. K. RiCKARDS: The Aeneid of Virgil, Books I-VI. 1871. 

C. P. Cranch: The Aeneid. 1872.* ** 

F. D. Morice: The Bee. Virgil's Fourth Georgic. 1872. 

Lord Ravensworth: The Aeneid of Virgil, Books VII-XII. 

1872. 
T. Clayton : The Aeneid of Virgil, Books I-VI. 1873. 
William Morris: The Aeneids of Virgil. 1875.** 
E. Harper : The Story of Troy. (Aen. 1 and 2.) 1876. 
M. P. W. Boulton: Translation of the Sixth Book of Virgil's 

Aeneid. 1877. 
W. J. Thornhill: The Passion of Dido. 1878. 

The Aeneid of Virgil. 1878. 
H. H. Pierce : A Rhythmic Prose Translation of Virgil's Aeneid. 

1879.* 



242 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

S. P. Reed: Virgil's Georgics, Book IV. 1879. 

A. Malet: The Aeneid. 1880. 
H.W.Preston: The Georgics of Vergil. 1881.* 
J. Rhoades: The Georgics. 1881. 

T. S. Burt: The Aeneid, Georgics and Eclogues of Virgil ... to- 
gether with other of his poems; to which are appended 
Maphaeus Vegius' Book XIII, etc. 1883. 

Samuel Palmer: EngUsh Version of the Eclogues. 1883. 

"Eta" (W. Cunningham): Virgil's First Pastoral: or, the Exiles 
of Mantua. 1884. 

B. H. Hampden-Jones: Vergil's Aeneid, Books IX and X. 1884. 
J. W. Moore : The Sixth Book of the Aeneid. 1884. 
J.A.Wilstach: The Works of Virgil. 1884.* 

E. J. L. Scott: The Eclogues of VirgU. 1884. 

H. Hailstone: Virgil's Aeneid, II. 1886. 

W. J. Thornhill: The Aeneid. 1886. 

Sir Charles Bowen : Virgil in English Verse. Eclogues and Aeneid, 

I-VI. 1887. 
A. A. I. Nesbitt: Vergil: Aeneid. (In Tutorial Series.) 1887, etc. 
Oliver Crane: Virgil's Aeneid. 1888.* 
"Delta": The First Book of the Aeneid. 1888. 
Mary E. Burt: Bees. A Study from Vergil. Revised and 

adapted from Da\adson's Translation. 1889.* 
H. W. Hunting: Virgil's Aeneid, IV, V. 1889. 
J. W. Mackail: The Eclogues and Georgics. 1889.** 
J. Perkins: Virgil's Aeneid, Books IV and V. 1889. 
H. T. Dufton: A Prose Translation of the Second Book of the 

Aeneid. 1890. 
H. W. Hunting: Aeneid VI. 1891. 
W. Farrar: Vergil's Aeneid, Book VI. 1893. 
A. H. Bryce: The Works of Virgil. 1894. 

Sir Theodore Martin: The Aeneid of Virgil, Books I-VI. 1896. 
Rt. Hon. Sir G. 0. Morgan: The Eclogues of Virgil. 1897. 
J. W. Mackail: The Eclogues, done into English Prose. 1899.** 
(?) The First Book of Virgil's Aeneis. (?) 
Henry Smith Wright: The Aeneid. 1903-1908. 
J. W. Mackail: The Georgics. 1904.* ** 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 243 

James Rhoades: The Aeneid of Virgil. 1906. 

John Conington: The Poems of Virgil, translated into English 

Prose. 1907.** 
R. S. Conway: The Fourth Eclogue, in Virgil's Messianic Eclogue. 

1907. 

D. E. Seligman: The Aeneid, Book VI. 1907. 

E. Fairfax Taylor: The Aeneid translated into English verse. 

1907. (Everyman's Library.) 
John Jackson: Virgil. 1908. 
J. W.Mackail: The Aeneid. 1908.** 
Theodore C. Williams: The Aeneid of Virgil. 1908.* 
Harlan HoGE Ballard : The Aeneid of Virgil. 1911.* 
Theodore C. Williams: The Georgics and Eclogues. 1915.* 
Robert Bridges: Ibant Obscuri: an Experiment in the Classical 

Hexameter. 1916. 
Joseph J. Mooney: The Minor Poems of Virgil. 1916. 

BURLESQUES, PARODIES AND IMITATIONS 

Charles Cotton: Scarronides, or Virgil Travestie. (Aen. 1 

and 4.) 1670.** 
John Phillips: Maronides, or Virgil Travesty, the Fifth Book. 
1672. 

Maronides, or Virgil Travesty. (Book VI.) 1673. 
(?) Cataplus, or Aeneas his Descent to Hell. 1672. 
^ (?) The Golden Age Restored. (In Dryden's Miscellany Poems, 
Part II.) 1685. 
(?) The Irish Hudibras, or Fingalian Prince: taken from the 
Sixth Book of Virgil's "Aeneids," and adjusted to the present 
State of Affairs. 1689. 
. (?) The History of the Famous . . . Love, between a fair, noble 
Parisian Lady, and a beautiful young Singing-Man. 1692. 
x(?) The Tryall of Skill between Squire Walsingham and Mother 
Osborne. An Eclogue in imitation of Virgil's Palaemon. 
1734. 
(?) Mother Gin. A Tragi-Comical Eclogue; being a paraphras- 
tical imitation of the Daphnis of Virgil. 1737. 



244 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

I. Hallam: The Cocker: a poem. In Imitation of Virgil's third 

Georgic. 1742. 
John Ellis: The Canto added by Maphaeus to Virgil's Twelve 

Books of Aeneas, from the original Bombastic, done into 

English Hudibrastic; with notes beneath, and Latin text in 

every other page annext. 1758. 
(?) The Story of Aeneas and Dido Burlesqued. 1774.* 
(?) An Elegy in a Riding-House, In Imitation of Virgil's First 

Pastoral. Latin and English. 1778. 
(?) The Patriots, a PoUtical Eclogue. (A Parody of Virgil's 

first Eclogue.) 1796. 
G. Daniel: Virgil in London, or Town Eclogues. 1814. 
(?) An Idyll on the Battle. (In Blackwood's Edinburgh Mag.) 

1823. 
\ Thomas Moore: The Milling-Match between Entellus and 

Dares. (?) 
(?) A Kerry Pastoral, in imitation of the First Eclogue of Virgil. 

1843. (Reprint.) 
(?) The Siege of Oxford. Fragments from the Second Book of 

the "Nova Aeneis." 1852. 
(?) The Death of the Sea-Serpent, by PubUus Jonathan Virgilius 

Jefferson Smith. (In Punch.) 1852. 
F. C. Burnand: Dido. (A dramatic burlesque.) 1860. 
(?) A Free and Independent Translation of the First and Fourth 

Books of the Aeneid of Virgil. 1870.* 
(?) The Georgics of Bacchicles. In Three Books. (?) 



INDEX 



Addison, Joseph, 137-138, 139, 

141, 144, 150, 151, 154, 159, 

160. 
Aelfric, 30. 
Aeneas Sylvius, 70. 
Aesop, 73. 

Agricola, Johann, 71. 
Akenside, Mark, 180-181, 193. 
Alamanni, Luigi, 78, 99. 
Alcuin, 23, 26-27. 
Aldhelm, 24-25. 
Alexander, Sir William, 133. 
Alfred, 27. 
Anacreon, 126. 
d'Andeli, Henri, 67, 69, 70. 
Anglo-Saxon vernacular poetry, 

27. 
Anti-Jacobin, 194. 
Antonio and Mellida, 122. 
Areopagus, The, 91. 
Ariosto, 78, 111, 114n, 138, 141. 
Aristotle, 10, 67, 68, 69, 74, 75, 

137, 206. 
Armstrong, John, 193. 
Arnold, Matthew, 212, 213, 216- 

217. 
Ascham, Roger, 72, 73, 74. 
Augustine, Saint, 170. 
Ausonius, 63n. 

Bacon, Francis, 125. 

Baebius ItaUcus (Pindar the The- 

ban), 18n. 
Baif, Jean Antoine de, 79, 99. 
Barclay, Alexander, 101. 



Barford, Mr., 174n. 

Barnfield, Richard, 106. 

de Barri, Gerald, 70. 

Basse, William, 106. 

Battle of the Seven Arts, The, 67, 69. 

Beattie, James, 200. 

Bede, 25-26. 

Benoit de Saint-Maure, 18, 61. 

Beowulf, 27-30. 

Bernard of Chartres, 17, 67. 

Blacklock, Alexander, 174n. 

Blackmore, Sir Richard, 128, 145- 

146, 160. 
Boccaccio, 43, 62, 63, 70, 76, 100, 

130. 
Boethius, 55n, 69. 
Boiardo, Matteo Maria, 78. 
Boileau, Nicholas, 10, 181. 
Bowyer, Mr., 165. 
Brathwaite, Richard, 106. 
Broome, WilUam, 174n. 
Browne, William, 106. 
Browning, EUzabeth Barrett, 217. 
Browning, Robert, 213, 217-219, 

223. 
Bryskett, Lodowick, 104. 
Burke, Edmund, 7, 159-160. 
Burley, Walter, 20, 22. 
Burne-Jones, Edward, 220. 
Butler, Samuel, 146. 
Byron, Lord, 198, 199. 

Caesar, 73. 
Calpumius Siculus, 1. 
Cambridge, 74. 



245 



246 



INDEX 



Cambridge, Richard Owen, 176- 
178. 

Camden, William, 129. 

Carteret, John, 214. 

Cato, 66, 68, 73. 

Catullus, 126, 201, 202, 204, 205. 

Caxton, WiUiam, 9, 20, 47, 62-65, 
80, 81, 82. 

Centos, 14. 

Chamberla3Tie, William, 132. 

Chapman, George, 98, 151, 223. 

Chatham, Earl of, 214. 

Chaucer, Geoffrey, 8, 9, 13, 16, 23, 
34, 38, 39-59, 72, 82, 95, 116, 
125, 148, 162, 220, 222. Book 
of the Duchess, 40. Canter- 
bury Tales, 39, 41. Hou^ of 
Fame, 41, 42-59. Legend of 
Good Women, 40, 41, 42, 43- 
54. Troilus and Criseyde, 
40n, 42, 57, 58. 

Cheke, John, 72. 

Chetwood, William, 154. 

Chrysoloras, Manuel, 70. 

Churchill, Charles, 174 and note. 

Cicero, 31, 69, 70, 71, 73, 75, 76, 
77, 124, 134. 

Cinthio, 79. 

Claudian, 58. 

Clough, Arthur Hugh, 217. 

Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 121, 
198, 219. 

Colet, John, 71. 

ColUns, Churton, 225, 230. 

Colhns, WilUam, 174n, 198. 

Columella, 1. 

Congreve, WiUiam, 174n. 

Conington, John, 219. 

Conrad of Querfurt, 21, 33. 

Cotton, Charles, 146-147. 

Cotton, Sir Robert, 129. 



Cowley, Abraham, 126-127, 131, 
133-137, 142n, 144, 154. 

Cowper, WiUiam, 194r-196, 197, 
198, 200, 202, 219. 

Crabbe, George, 199. 

Cranch, C. P., 219. 

Crashaw, Richard, 125, 126. 

Cunningham, John, 174n. 

Daniel, Samuel, 123, 129, 130. 
Dante, 13, 14-15, 17, 61n, 100, 

114n, 206. 
Dares Phrygius, 9, 18, 40, 57, 58, 

61, 66, 79, 97, 131. 
Darwin, Erasmus, 194. 
Davenant, Sir WiUiam, 132. 
Denham, Sir John, 137, 151-152, 

154. 
Dennis, John, 146, 160. 
Dickens, Charles, 215. 
Dictys the Cretan, 18, 61. 
Didactic poetry, 10, 179-196, 198. 

199. 
Dido plays, 79, 116-118. 
Dodsley, Robert, 193. 
Dolce, Lodovico, 79, 116. 
Dolopathos, 16, 20. 
Donatus, 15, 16, 231. 
Don Quixote, 177. 
Dome, John, 75. 
Douglas, Gavin, 9, 17, 20, 65, 80- 

86, 87, 89, 93, 121, 151. 
Drayton, Michael, 106, 123, 129, 

130-131. 
Drummond, WiUiam, 126. 
Dryden, John, 10, 87, 132, 148, 

150, 152-158, 159, 160-162, 

165, 166, 177. Virgil, 152- 

158. Annus Mirabilis, 160- 

162. 
Dyer, John, 181, 193. 



INDEX 



247 



Eliot, George, 215. 

Elyot, Sir Thomas, 73. 

Eneit, 19. 

Eneydos, 19, 47, 62-65, 80. 

Ennius, 207. 

Epic, 1, 9, 10, 109-113, 128-146, 
149. In France, 132. Re- 
ligious epic, 132, 133-145. 

Epirota, 15. 

Erasmus, Desiderius, 71, 72. 

Euripides, 5, 74, 202. 

Evelyn, John, 35. 

da Feltre, Vittorino, 70. 
Fenton, Elijah, 174n. 
Fielding, Henry, 177, 198. 
Fletcher, Giles, 133. 
Fletcher, Phineas, 106-108, 125, 

133. 
Fontenelle, Bernard le Bovier de, 

165. 
Fox, Charles, 214. 
Frischhn, Nikodemus, 79. 
Fulgentius, Fabius Planciades, 17, 

31,92. 

Gager, WiUiam, 117. 

Gallery of Gallant Inventions, A, 95. 

Garland, John, 68, 70. 

Garth, Samuel, 180. 

Gawain and the Greene Knight, 39, 

60-61. 
Gay, John, 173, 174n, 177, 179. 
Geoffrey of Monmouth, 37. 
Gervase of Tilbury, 21, 33. 
Gesta Romanorum, 36. 
GOdas, 24. 

Gladstone, William, 214, 215. 
Glover, Samuel, 149, 160. 
Googe, Barnabe, 101. 
Gower, John, 16, 23, 34-35, 39, 40, 

54, 59-60, 93. 



Grainger, James, 193. 

Gray, Thomas, 198. 

Green, Matthew, 193. 

Grimoald, Nicholas, 94, 99. 

Grocyn, WiUiam, 71. 

Guarini, Giovanni Battista, 70. 

Guido delle Colonne, 18, 57, 61. 

Hall, Edward, 129. 

HalUwell, Edward, 116. 

Harington, Sir John, 151. 

Harvey, Gabriel, 104, 111. 

Harvey, WilUam, 125. 

Hawes, Stephen, 16, 23, 59, 92. 

Hegius, 71. 

Heinsius, Daniel and Nikolaas, 
125. 

Herrick, Robert, 126. 

Heywood, Thomas, 119. 

Hobbes, Thomas, 132. 

Hoccleve, Thomas, 60. 

Hogarth, WilUam, 177. 

HoUnshed, Raphael, 129. 

Homer, 3, 4, 5, 18, 27, 57, 58, 77, 
78, 111, 113, 123, 128, 134, 
135, 136, 138, 139, 140, 144, 
145, 149, 152, 160, 161, 175, 
177, 197, 200, 202, 205, 207, 
213, 217, 232. 

Hoole, Charles, 73. 

Horace, 28, 31, 66, 73, 98, 112, 126, 
134, 138, 149, 150, 188, 201, 
220, 232. 

Isaiah, 170, 171, 188. 

Jacke Jugeler, 122. 
Jago, Richard, 173, 174n. 
Jenyns, Soame, 193. 
Jerome, 23, 63n. 
JodeUe, Etienne, 79, 116. 



248 



INDEX 



John of Salisbury, 17, 26n, 30-32, 

67, 68, 70, 92. 
Johnson, Samuel, 145, 160, 171, 

172, 233. 

Jonson, Ben, 98-99, 120, 122-123, 

124, 125, 126, 129, 151. 
Joseph of Exeter, 19, 61. 
Josephus, 58. 
Joubert, Joseph, 216, 217. 
Justin, 63n. 
Juvenal, 75. 

Keats, John, 198n. 
Kennedy, R. and C. R., 219. 
Kirchmayer, 79. 
Knaustius, 79. 
Kynaston, Sir Francis, 125. 

Landor, Walter Savage, 11, 12, 
166, 188, 200-211, 212, 227, 
230. Imaginary Conversa- 
tions, 201-207. Gebir, 207- 
210. Latin poems, 211. 

Lang, Andrew, 215-216, 221, 224, 
227. 

von Lange, 71. 

Lauderdale, Earl of, 152, 154. 

Layamon, 37. 

Lily, William, 71, 72. 

Linacre, Thomas, 71. 

Livy, 75. 

"L. M. W. M., Right Honorable," 

173, 174n. 
Lodge, Thomas, 106. 
Logan, John, 174n. 

Loves of the Triangles, The, 194, 

198. 
Lowe, Robert, 214, 215. 
Lowell, James Russell, 129. 
Lucan, 31, 58, 64n, 75, 130. 
Lucretius, 3, 6, 191, 202, 204, 205, 

213. 



Lydgate, John, 16, 61-62, 93. 
Ljf/e of Virgilitis, The, 20, 22, 92, 

98. 
Lyly, John, 72. 
Lyrical Ballads, 198. 
Lyttelton, Lord, 164, 174n, 181, 

187. 

Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 

216. 
Mackail, J. W., 206-207, 219, 221. 
MaUet, David, 193. 
Mantuan, 76, 78, 101, 102, 105, 

106, 108. 
Map, Walter, 36. 
Marlowe, Christopher, 23, 79, 92, 

117-118. 
Marot, Clement, 79, 100, 102. 
Marston, John, 122. 
Mason, William, 174n, 193, 194, 

198. 
Meres, Francis, 123, 129. 
Merlin, 23, 34, 35. 
Miller, Joaquin, 218. 
Milton, John, 7, 10, 37, 108-109, 

127-128, 131, 132, 137-145, 

168, 169, 208, 229, 234. 

Lycidas, 108-109, 127. Comus, 

109. Paradise Lost, 128, 

137-143, 145, 160. Paradise 

Regained, 143-144. 
Mock-epic, 10, 146-147, 175-178, 

198. 
Molza, 80, 86. 
More, Sir Thomas, 71. 
Morris, WiUiam, 89, 217, 218-224. 

Manuscript of the Aeneid, 

220. Translation of the 

Aeneid, 220-224. 
Mulgrave, Earl of, 154. 
Mustard, W. P., 230. 



INDEX 



249 



Naevius, 207. 

Nash, Thomas, 79, 117-118. 

Naude, Gabriel, 16. 

Neckam, Alexander, 22, 32-33, 70. 

Nennius, 24, 37. 

Newton, Sir Isaac, 125. 

Nicolas of Clemangis, 71. 

Ogilby, John, 152. 

Ovid, 1, 5, 31, 40, 43, 45, 54, 55, 
58, 60, 68, 69, 71, 73, 75, 98, 
120, 127, 128, 134, 161, 170, 
202, 213. 

Oxford, 68-69, 74-75. 

Pastoral, 10, 100-109, 127, 164- 
174, 199. 

Paul, Herbert, 214n. 

Peele, George, 106, 117. 

Petrarch, 9, 70, 74, 76-77, 78, 
100. 

Phaer, Thomas, 80, 87, 88-90, 
151, 223. 

Philips, Ambrose, 172, 174n. 

Philips, John, 180. 

Pilatus, 70. 

Pitt, Christopher, 158-159. 

Pitt, WilHam, 214. 

Plautus, 74, 75. 

Pliny, 75. 

Politian, 70, 78. 

Pomfret, John, 174n. 

Pope, Alexander, 10, 142n, 144, 
148, 162, 163-172, 174-176, 
177, 179, 181, 198, 199, 204. 
Alcander, 164. Pastorals, 
164-169, 170. Discourse on 
Pastoral Poetry, 165. Wind- 
sor Forest, 170. Messiah, 
170-172. Thebaid, 174-175. 
Dunciad, 175, 199. Rape of 
the Lock, 175-176, 198. 



Prior, Matthew, 174n. 
Propertius, 77. 
Pulci, Luigi, 78. 
Pulteney, WilUam, 214. 

Quarles, Francis, 106. 
Quintihan, 75. 

Racine, Jean Baptiste, 216, 217. 

Raleigh, Sir Walter, 111, 112. 

Ramsay, Allan, 173, 174n. 

Raphael, 204. 

Rapin, 165. 

Ritwise, John, 116. 

Robinson, Nicholas, 117. 

Rogers, Samuel, 199. 

Roman de la Rose, 114. 

Roman de Troie, 18. 

Romans d'Eneas, 19, 40, 43, 47, 52, 

62, 220. 
Ronsard, Pierre de, 79. 
Roscommon, Earl of, 151, 154. 
Rossetti, Christina and Dante 

Gabriel, 217. 
Rucellai, Giovanni, 78, 99. 
Rymer, Thomas, 137. 

Sabie, Francis, 106. 

SackviUe, Thomas, 95-97, 110. 

Sallust, 73, 75. 

Salvatio Romae, 22, 23, 33-35, 62, 

82n. 
Sannazaro, Jacopo, 76, 78, 100, 

102, 108. 
Scaliger, Julius Caesar, 79. 
Scarron, Paul, 146. 
Scott, John, 174n. 
Scott, Sir Walter, 86. 
Scriblerus, Martinus, 175n, 176- 

178. 



250 



INDEX 



Sedley, Sir Charles, 151. . 

Selden, John, 125. 

Selling, William TiUy of, 71. 

Seneca, 73, 117. 

Servius, 16. 

Seven Sages, The, 23, 34. 

Shakespeare, WilUam, 98, 120- 

122. 
Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 198, 213, 

219. 
Shenstone, WiUiam, 173, 174n. 
Sidney, Sir Philip, 68, 93, 101. 
Sihus Itahcus, 1. 
Smart, Christopher, 193. 
SomerviUe, Wilham, 177, 181, 193, 

194. 
Sophocles, 74. 
Southey, Robert, 202, 208. 
Spectator, The, 137, 138, 150. 
Spenser, Edmund, 9, 17, 35, 93, 

96n, 100-105, 107, 108, 110- 

116, 123, 125, 128, 131, 138, 

141, 165, 172, 181, 234. 

Shepheardes Calender, 101- 

105. Faerie Queene, 110-116. 
Stanyhm-st, Richard, 90-91. 
Statins, 58, 170, 174. 
Steele, Sir Richard, 172. 
Stow, John, 129. 
Strode, Ralph, 40. 
Suetonius, 75. 
Surrey, Earl of, 80, 86-88, 121, 

151. 
Swift, Jonathan, 67, 150, 173, 

174n, 177, 179, 191. 
Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 

200, 213, 217. 



Tasso, Torquato, 78-79, 111. 
Temple, Sir William, 151. 



Tennyson, Alfred, 7, 11, 12, 107n, 
144, 166, 213, 224-233, 234. 
"The English VergU," 224- 
225, 233. To Virgil, 22&-229, 
230, 233. The Daisy, 229. 
Idylls of the King, 230-231. 
Will, 231-232. 

Terence, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75. 

Thackeray, William Makepeace, 
215. 

Theocritus, 2, 101, 102, 103, 109, 
165, 167, 172, 174, 197, 201, 
204, 213. 

Thompson, William, 174n, 193. 

Thomson, James, 10, 162, 164, 
179-193, 194, 195, 198. The 
Seasons, 181-192, 198. 

Tickell, Thomas, 142n, 193. 

"Tityre-tu's," The, 125. 

Tonson, Jacob, 164. 

Tottel's Miscellany, 94. 

Trapp, Joseph, 158. 

Turbervile, George, 63n, 94. 

Tusser, Thomas, 99. 

Twyne, Thomas, 87, 89. 

Tyndale, William, 72. 

Valerius Flaccus, 1. 

Valerius Maximus, 75. 

Vegius, Maphaeus, 65, 70, 77-78, 
80, 89. 

Vergil: Life and work, 1-7. 
Style, 6, 7. In the Middle 
Ages, 8, 13-38; grammarian, 
8, 15; rhetorician, 8, 16; 
prophet of Christ, 8, 16, 17, 
83, 170; moralist and writer 
of aUegory, 16-17, 31-32, 77, 
83, 92-93; writer of romance, 
8, 18-20; magician, 8, 16, 20- 
23, 32-36, 59, 92. In the 



INDEX 



251 



fifteenth century, 8, 9, 39-65. 
And humanism, 9, 66-91; in 
education, 66-76; in Utera- 
ture, 76-91. In the Renais- 
sance, 9, 92-123; in drama, 
116-123. In the seventeenth 
century, 9, 124-147; educa- 
tion, 124—125; lyric poets, 
125-127; epic poets, 128-146; 
parodies, 146-147. In the 
pseudo-classic period, 10, 148- 
196. In the Romantic period, 
11, 197-211, 212. In the 
Victorian period, 11, 12, 212- 
234; in oratory, 214-215; in 
prose, 215-217. Transla- 
tions, 80-91, 150-159, 219- 
224, 229; list of translations, 
burlesques, parodies, and imi- 
tations, 238-246. 

Vergil's pillar of tinned iron, 57- 
59, 148. 

Vida, Marco Girolamo, 78, 79, 95. 

Voltaire, 153. 

Vossius, Gerardus Johannes, 125. 



Waller, Edmund, 124, 151, 154. 
Walpole, Sir Robert, 214. 
Walsh, WilUam, 165, 173, 174n. 
Waltharius, 14n. 
Warner, WiUiam, 61n, 63n, 97, 

123, 129-130, 131. 
Warton, Joseph, 158-159, 165, 

199. 
Warton, Thomas, 174n. 
Webbe, WiUiam, 88. 
Wessel, 71. 

Whitehead, Paul, 177. 
Wilkie, William, 149, 160, 197, 

198. 
Wilham of Malmesbury, 36. 
Wimpfeling, 71. 
Wither, WiUiam, 106. 
Wolsey, Cardinal, 72, 116. 
Wordsworth, WilUam, 194, 200, 

219. 
Wyatt, Sir Thomas, 94, 95. 
Wycherley, William, 165. 

Yeats, WiUiam Butler, 233. 
Young, Thomas, 159. 



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Lord Byron as a Satirist in Verse. By Claude M. Fuess, Ph.D. 

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The Commedia dell' Arte. A Study in Italian Popular Comedy. By 

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Literary Influences in Colonial Newspapers, 1704-1760. By Elizabeth 

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Learned Societies and English Literary Scholarship in Great Britain 

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Aaron Hill. Poet, Dramatist, Projector. By Dorotht Brewster, 

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Chaucer and the Roman de la Rose. By Dean Spruill Fansler, 

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Gnomic Poetry in Anglo-Saxon. By Blanche Colton Williams, 

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American Literature in Spain. By John DeLancet Ferguson, 

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The Rhythm of Prose. By William Morrison Patterson, Ph.D, 

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English Domestic Relations, 1487-1653. By Chilton Latham 

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The Mystic Vision in the Grail Legend and in the Divine Comedy. 

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Dickens, Reade, and Collins, Sensation Novelists. By Walter C. 

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